


Masked Ball

by Waid



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: (But really half-arsed internalized homophobia though), Case, Fog, Internalized Homophobia, Lots and lots of fog, M/M, Masks, Minor Violence, Mystery, Tricksters, casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-12 18:06:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waid/pseuds/Waid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six months after Holmes’ return from the dead, the delicate equilibrium in Baker Street is disturbed when  a stranger walks out of the London fog with a case – for Watson. Holmes is wary, Watson is fascinated. But who is the man calling himself Álvaro de León? And what does he really want?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tweedisgood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tweedisgood/gifts), [perverse_idyll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perverse_idyll/gifts).



> For Perverse_Idyll and Tweedisgood. Further notes and massive apologies [here.](http://w-a-i-d.livejournal.com/33786.html)
> 
>  
> 
> "The Trickster. It's a mythic archetype all over the world: the god, demigod or cunning being/man/spirit who plays tricks on Gods and mortals, and thereby shows them something about themselves or the ways of the world. Loki, Prometheus, Anansi... 
> 
> What if Holmes appears to have been completely fooled, bamboozled and defeated by a clever foe ... and either in the process learns a valuable lesson about himself (and hopefully Watson, hint hint) or is in fact himself the trickster in some way and Watson is the recipient of the lesson?"
> 
>  **NOT A WIP**. (Though I will have to proofread it as I go along, there are a couple of bollocksed sentences in there).
> 
> I will post a chapter every day --possibly every other day if I have to fix something or if I'm insanely busy, but there will NOT be big gaps. It is finished, I swear.

 

If only my friend would allow it, I could a tale unfold. With a few small omissions and elisions to protect the safety and privacy of all concerned, it would be quite fit for the press.  Yet Holmes remains adamant.  “Forgive a man his _amour-propre,_ however ill-founded,Watson,” he has said. “I may have charged you with exaggerating my accomplishments, but I find myself in no hurry to see you publicise a matter in which I was such an utter gull from start to finish.”

 

In vain I have argued that what I shall dub here (where he cannot tax me with romantic folly) _The Adventure of the Masked Ball,_  was as admirable a display of his remarkable abilities as I have ever witnessed.  Of course I will abide by his wishes as I always have. But for my own satisfaction at least, I shall set the story down before any of the details fade. There is no feature of the case I should ever wish to forget.

 

Properly speaking it did not begin as Holmes’ case at all.

 

It was midnight, I was walking down Curzon Street alone, and I was being followed.

 

London was sunk in the first deep fog of the season. Every streetlamp was a mere tawny smear in the brown unnatural dark, in which ghostly patches of wall or cobbled ground seemed to hover in a void. I had just left my club, where I had run into Gilbreath, who had been a fellow-patient of mine at Peshawar. We had not seen one another in fifteen years, but he assured me he had read several of my Strand pieces – which idea prompted him to offer his condolences on the death of my friend, and to inquire after the health of my wife. Despite the press interest following the Moran case, it was not the first time I had had to explain to some baffled well-wisher that my poor wife was two years dead and my friend six months resurrected, but I was yet to find an uncomplicated way of doing it. When at last we had parted, the murk was more impenetrable than ever and I had been unable to find a cab. But my way home was straight enough that I was confident enough of reaching it on foot.

 

Aside from the light, rapid footsteps, and the soft regular tap of a cane on the pavement, the street was utterly empty. At least, so far as I could tell – for when London is lying smothered in her own dark exhalations, a man might pass by his dearest friend at a hand’s distance, and think himself always alone.  As I crossed one of those islands of half-light beneath a lamp, I glanced  over my shoulder.  But still I could not _see_ anyone, nor yet be certain that my intuitive certainty that those footsteps  were tracking mine was correct.

 

I crossed the street, and so did the footsteps. I turned onto South Audley Street and my companion was behind me still.

 

I summoned such skills as my friend has taught me, while instincts embedded  in my army days sparked along my nerves like lines of gunpowder: _only one,_ _slightly built, agile, but seems to need that cane, yes, limping on his right leg – shouldn’t be a match for me alone, unless he’s armed._

 

But nothing about the unseen stranger’s gait could give me an answer to that, or tell me his intentions. I had my own stick, but no other weapon.

 

Whoever he was, I saw reason to indulge him any further in the charade I had not noticed his presence. I could at least choose the ground on which I met him. I tried to lead my pursuer into another dim pool of light on the corner of  Tilney Street, then stopped walking and turned round.

 

“Who’s there?”  I demanded, and though I know my voice was steady, there is something chilling in uttering that question into apparent nothingness. I strained my eyes towards a shape that might almost be a trick of the mind -- a thickening of vapour in the dark.

 

But it answered – in a low, soft, deliberate voice.  “Good evening, Dr. Watson.”

 

It does sometimes happen that persons unknown to me greet me in the street by name. Although I never describe myself in my writings, and though only one photograph of me has ever appeared in print (and that rather a poor one, for which I am thankful) still, I have not troubled to make any great secret of my habits, and some of my readers are assiduous in their enthusiasm.

 

Such encounters – sometimes tiresome, sometimes flattering -- had only ever occurred before in daylight.

 

“If you’re going to talk,” I said, “come into the lamplight.”

 

Obediently, the shape came closer; a smudge in the fog, then a dark column, then the outline of a slender young man in a long paletot. He was hatless despite the cold, exposing thick, backswept curls to the sickly air. 

 

I looked to his hands and then his waist, for weapons either carried openly or concealed. I  saw nothing but the silver-topped cane in his left hand, and he was leaning on that casually, hardly a combative stance.   I strained to make out his face, as if through cataracts. He was smiling at me.

 

“You seem to have the advantage of me,” I observed.

 

“My name is Álvaro de León,” said the stranger. But even with the clue of a Spanish name, I could not satisfy myself to the origin of his curious, hovering accent. As he continued speaking it seemed to flutter from place to place without ever quite alighting, and  I could only have said he certainly was not English.  “I apologise if I startled you. You see, I missed you at your club, and the matter on which I hoped to consult you is somewhat urgent.”

 

I sighed, all my remaining apprehension sliding away into mere annoyance. Yet despite the hour, and the impudence of the solicitation,  for a moment I did wonder if I had better not drag the fellow back to Holmes. We do, of course, abandon our rooms at all hours when the case demands it,  and my friend had not worked in weeks. As London sank into miasma as if into a sickbed, so I had watched a pall of depression descend upon my friend, as if he truly were the city’s _genius loci_. It was the first such fit I had witnessed since his return, and either I had forgotten how painful they could be to watch, or the experience of watching a friend suffer is genuinely worse when one has, until relatively recently, supposed him lost for good. Perhaps it might have been expected that his extraordinary survival  should have convinced me the man was all but invincible, but in fact, the opposite was true.

 

 And he was still in the restless, nervous stage where the descent might sometimes yet be checked, if the right problem came along to rout the horrors massing in that remarkable brain. It is almost a harder stage to watch than the black hopelessness that, at the worst, succeeds it, for one knows help is not impossible and yet _cannot help._  

 

Nevertheless,  unless lives were in imminent danger, I could not feel this mode of consulting with clients was to be encouraged and so I began firmly:  “Well, if you would care to call at Baker Street tomorrow morning, Mr Holmes will, I am sure, be glad to listen to your statement ...”

 

“Oh, I have no need of a detective,” interrupted the stranger blithely. “It was _your_ services that  I hoped to engage.”

 

I had been about to walk on, but I was so astonished by this that I stopped in my tracks.  “I beg your pardon?” was all I could manage at first. And then, stepping closer in some concern, “are you in need of a doctor?”

Mr de  León did not appear unwell, now I could see him a little more clearly.  His skin looked as clear and fresh as any could in that sallow light. He had a vivid, triangular  face, the feline breadth of brow and cheekbone accentuated by the wealth of curls bracketing his temples, while a crisp goatee sharpened the point of his chin. A neat moustache framed smooth, full lips.

 

He shook his curly head. “I need a brave, discreet, reliable sort of a fellow, who doesn’t object to breaking the law in a good cause, and knows how to handle a gun.”

 

I was so disgusted by this as to question whether he deserved an answer at all. I turned away, but through my teeth I said: “Whatever you have heard of me, sir,  you have been misled if you suppose I am a thug for hire.”

 

“Oh, not in the  least!” said the young man, with a laugh. He sprang forward to keep pace with me and I observed that yes, the walking stick he carried appeared to be something more than an affectation, or even a weapon.  He did limp, though the slight drag of his right leg was so smoothly incorporated into the flow of his gait that the impression of youthful energy and grace was not diminished.

 

 “Again,” he said, “I must apologise. I fear I misrepresent myself. Were you to accept my terms there is little real chance you would be called upon to break the law, though  I felt it only fair to warn you it is not impossible.  There is a certain gentleman whose safety I have reason to fear for. I only want someone to watch over him – from a distance, for the next few days. I have been doing what I can myself, you understand, but for the rest of this week or so I shall have other engagements. You would keep an eye on this unfortunate friend of mine and, should anybody try to murder him, you would oblige me greatly by doing what is reasonably in your power to prevent it. What could a man like you object to in that?”

 

I had slowed my pace to listen to him, as much from exasperation with myself as with involuntary intrigue. His request was ridiculous, probably a foolish and malicious prank – yet I had witnessed so many strange things over the years that I could not quite dismiss the possibility there was some truth to it, and someone was in genuine danger. 

 “If you really believe that your friend is in danger of his life,” I said, warily, “You had better go to the police.”

 

“There is nothing the police can do,” replied Álvaro de León. “They are not in the habit of standing guard over persons against whom no crime has provably been committed. At most, they would advise him to be cautious, which he is already, and such a visit might alert him to my involvement, and that is one of many eventualities I wish to avoid.”

 

“What?” I cried, “You mean you wanted me – someone --  to watch him without his knowledge?”

 

“Well, of course. That is what I meant by discretion.”

 

“If he is in such peril, he has a right to know it.”

 

“He does know it,” said Mr de León, unperturbed. “He does not know he has protectors, that is all, and to make him aware of it would defeat the object. Without a doubt he would run off and act in such a way as to make his danger worse.”

 

“This is  not – this is impossible.”

 

“Why?” Álvaro de León asked, eyes ingenuously wide.

 

“You had better come  back tomorrow and discuss it with Mr Holmes,” I almost pleaded.

 

“But I would not wish to trespass on Mr Holmes’ time, when I have no need of his services.  I have everything quite in hand, excepting only that I cannot be in two places at once. I would pay whatever you asked.”

 

I had to refuse, of course. I could not agree to spy upon a man without his knowledge, at the behest of a riddling stranger who appeared out of the fog in the middle of the night; I could not allow myself to be caught up in what was probably a foolish hoax. Yet I did hesitate. Uninviting as the task the strange youth had offered me was, still I did regret the necessity of sending him away and never knowing the truth of it.

 

“It is impossible,” I repeated, more firmly this time. “I cannot do as you wish.”

 

“Ah, how sorry I am to hear it!” exclaimed Mr de León, without rancour. “But I understand. It was an unorthodox request. Well then, I shall wish you goodnight.”

 

He gave me a little bow, and passed me by. For a moment I had the clearest vision of his face I had had yet. Wide, clear eyes met mine.  They were neither light nor dark and I could not make out their true colour in that gloom (though I did see for the first time that his dark hair and beard were touched with red). But they were wonderful eyes, shining and deep and unexpectedly sad. And I was almost certain  I had seen Mr de León somewhere before.

 

Then he was gone into the fog, and that flash of recognition vanished with him.

 

 *

 

The lingering unease Mr de León had left behind him had dissipated by the time I reached Baker Street, and I was quite looking forward to telling Holmes of my minor adventure. The strangeness of it – the impudence of it, at least - ought to be enough to stir his interest, if only briefly.

 

I could hear no sound from our rooms as I mounted the stairs, and as I unlocked the inner door I felt my heart squeeze with a dread I am not sure I shall ever quite be free of --  dread that despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary, the last six months had all been some longing dream: I was still in my desolate rooms in Kensington;  Holmes was where he always had been; at the bottom of that awful chasm in Switzerland.

 

But he was there in his armchair beside a spent fire, fast asleep, coiled into what should have been an impossibly uncomfortable knot of angular limbs, his violin on the floor beside him.

 

I sat opposite him with a sigh, and watched him for a minute or two with relief and fondness and more sorrow than I could quite account for. I considered rousing him and steering him to his bedroom – but after the mood in which he’d spent the day there was a strong chance that to wake him would only rob him of what sleep he might come by that night.

 

I placed a blanket over him, and then went to bed, full of restless memories of Peshawar and Kensington and Switzerland, and through it all there flickered the peculiar impression   Mr Álvaro de León had made upon me.


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

Holmes’ only interest in the breakfast table the following morning lay in the silver-plated coffee-pot and the small pile of letters. Rather to my surprise, he acknowledged the imprecations I was beginning by wanly eating a roll as he sifted discontentedly through the post,  apparently sure of disappointment already.

 

“It will take a little time for word to spread that you are back in practice,” I urged him, sensing that to him the letters radiated poisonous banality through their very envelopes. “London is still as plentiful with problems as ever, I assure you. They will find their way to you soon enough.”

 

Without answering he passed me my own letters. They were, for the most part, even less interesting than his, though fortunately I did not depend so heavily on the post  for my well-being. There were a couple of bills, a letter from a charitable organisation, and then –

 

“Holmes,” I cried, before I had reached the end of the second paragraph.

 

My friend looked up, little but weariness in his face. I began to read the letter aloud, as I had so many others.

 

_Dear Dr Watson,_

_I hope you will forgive me for making another attempt to interest you in my case.  This is my first visit to your country in several years and I do not know whom else I might approach for help. Perhaps if I were to furnish you with some details I had no time to mention last night, you might be so good as to reconsider._

_The gentleman whose safety so concerns me is Mr Nathan Grey, of 33a, Queen Street in Deptford. Regrettably, we have not been on speaking terms for several years, (hence my desire not to disturb him) but I still take a friendly interest in his welfare, and would certainly not wish any harm to come to him by way of our old acquaintance._

_My fears may strike you as fanciful – well, consider it so, though it is a fancy I am prepared to pay handsomely to indulge.  However Mr Grey has suffered attempts on his life before.  Though he has now fallen on hard times (he is making his living as a private tutor of Latin) he was once a successful barrister practicing in your city. He was at that time extremely generous to me, far more so than most men in his position would have been, and I shall never forget it. He had, however, the misfortune to make a powerful and vengeful enemy of one Siegfried Wettin, a man of some standing among the criminal fraternities of Europe, who pursued him even to the continent. Should you oblige me so far as to visit Queen Street, you will notice a scar upon Mr Grey’s forehead, received when his carriage was deliberately overturned.  You may need a more detailed description in order to recognise him: he is a fraction of an inch below six foot, clean-shaven, with thick, black hair turning steel-grey, and dark brown eyes. He is forty-two years old._

_I have seen two men who are certainly not students of Latin watching his lodgings, and once following him down New Cross Road. One is man of medium height, with light brown hair and doughy features, perhaps thirty years old. His companion is closer to forty, taller, and bald with a round, florid face. I believe their task has thus far been merely to watch and be sure Nathan Grey is no threat to their master, for they have done him no harm._

_Lest I appear to paint too dark a picture, let me assure you that I expect matters with  Siegfried Wettin will be resolved to my satisfaction by the end of the week, and I consider it unlikely that Mr. Grey will be the victim of any further attacks before that time.  He was never the primary target of Wettin’s predations. I am simply too cautious to neglect what risk remains. I must have someone trustworthy to see to his wellbeing while my business with Mr Wettin detains me elsewhere._

_As I told you, Mr Grey well knows the danger that hangs over him, and you may wonder if it would not be preferable to remove him to some place of safety until it has passed. I promise you, he would never consent to go. He is true as steel; a man of dauntless courage  who could not endure to sit back while others grappled with any risk on his behalf. He would rush to meet the danger I am working so hard to confound, and I fear he would pay for his courage with his life._

_As I said to you last night, if you would consent to assist me in this, I would happily pay any price you cared to name._

_Give my regards to Mr Holmes.  I was very glad to read of his survival._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Álvaro de León._

_P.S.  You may find me at the establishment of my dear friend, Count Friedrich of Havelberg, who is visiting London on business._

 

Holmes’  face had  shifted at first into the impassive mask which looks so  like bored inattention and signals in fact that he is stripping away all mental obstacles between himself and the data. As I went on his eyebrows quirked in surprise and by the time I had finished his expression had settled into something between irritation and amusement.

 

“Well, Watson,” he said, when I had done, “I suppose I have no right to monopolise your valuable talents, yet I cannot say I quite approve of you hawking them out elsewhere whenever my poor practice gets into the doldrums.”

 

 “It is very bizarre,” I said. “I never thought I would hear from him again.”

 

Holmes held out his hand and I gave him the letter. “This person accosted you last night, then?”

 

“Yes,” I said, “I meant to tell you, though I thought it was probably all some silly trick. It _must_ be a trick, must it not? I could not answer him even if I wished to take up his offer -- there is no address. Only this line about finding him with ‘Friedrich of Havelberg’.”

 

 “Yet if it is a trick, it is a very elaborate one,” murmured Holmes, tilting the paper this way and that.   He  rose to  seize his magnifying glass from the mantelpiece.

 

“What is it?” I asked. “The paper –?”

 

“The handwriting. It looks like a free, careless, round hand, does it not? But the pen has passed far more slowly over the paper than is natural.  The letters are as much _drawn_ as written. Each stroke of each letter has been placed with extraordinary care. The words are his own, I am sure, but he has copied a sample of some other hand.” He handed it back to me.  “What do you make of that?”

 

“You have seen his real handwriting before,” I said, with a faint chill, and remembered that moment of conviction that I _knew_ Mr de León, from somewhere . . .

 

Holmes smiled faintly.  “The letter is for you,” he observed.

 

“Surely his real aim is at you. If he has gone to such lengths to disguise his handwriting --he wants something of you.”

 

“Well, perhaps. But there are numerous other possibilities. He might merely have wished to strip his natural handwriting of any telling features, in which case I must say he has succeeded. All I can conclude with certainty is that here _is a person who is capable of such a feat_. That makes him a remarkable individual – yet what stripe of remarkable I cannot speculate. You had better tell me what you made of him.”

 

I gave as precise a report as I could of the previous night’s encounter, omitting no detail I could remember of Mr de León’s appearance or conversation. Inevitably it was not exact enough for Holmes’ liking, and he soon began interrogating me as to particulars.

 

“He was dressed like a gentleman, saving he had no hat.  I did not notice anything telling about his hands or shoes. It _was_ foggy,” I said apologetically.

 

Holmes tutted discontentedly. “Very well. His age, then?”

 

I opened my mouth to answer and then found myself closing it again. After a moment’s perplexity I replied,  “Ageless.”

 

“ _Ageless_?” Holmes’ dark brows fairly leapt.  “That is a very singular, yet altogether unhelpful description,” he remarked, after a short pause.

 

“At first I thought he was very young,” I said. “No more than perhaps twenty-one. But now I feel sure I was wrong, and that he must have been older... and yet I do not know why I think so, or why I made the mistake in the first place,” I finished, sheepishly.

 

“Older than twenty-one, younger than fifty, let us say,” concluded Holmes with scathing impatience. Yet there was such a bright glint of interest in his eyes by now that I was  fervently thankful for Mr de León, rogue or criminal though he might be.    

 

“His clothes,” I said suddenly. “I think there was something about his clothes. “

 

“Stains, wear, splashes – ”

 

“No,” I said uncertainly. “I think . . . they were all new. Not brand new that very day, perhaps, but all bought quite recently. Except for the cane, the way he leant on that suggested a long familiarity with it.”

 

“You said he limped?”

 

“Yes, though relatively slightly. An injury acquired in adulthood, I would guess – not a childhood illness or birth defect. It happened long enough ago that he has thoroughly adapted to it.”

 

Holmes’ fingers drummed a fitful tattoo on the mantelpiece. He sprang over to his shelf of indices, and dragged down the volume containing the L’s – but there was no entry for de León _._ “I thought as much,” he said.  “Though I could almost fancy I had heard the name.”

 

“I had the same impression,” I said, oddly anxious at this coincidence. “I thought I had _seen_ him before, too . . .” But Holmes had already pulled down another pair of volumes and was leafing through them rapidly.

 

“Nothing for Siegfried Wettin, either. Freidrich of Havelberg, however – that name I _do_ know.”

 

The entry ran over more than a page. Holmes struck a finger on a pasted cutting from a German newspaper with fierce satisfaction.

 

“He is, or was, what you so stoutly refused to be, Watson – a hired thug, though a thug of the most aristocratic and expensive extraction.” He turned back a number of pages before I had read more than a few lines and found another entry:  _Gruner._

 

“There is an excellent example. Baron Gruner is a clever, vicious man, yet not so clever or vicious he could have escaped justice for the murder of his wife without help. And help he had: the one witness died,  the  case collapsed, Baron Gruner walked free – and  Count Friedrich became envoy to the Grand Duchy of Posen. He refilled the family coffers very nicely. When he came of age the castle of Havelberg was falling down about his ears and all its lands were sold or mortgaged to the hilt. Nine years ago he had wealth, influence and distinction.  Yet something went wrong for Count Friedrich then.  Louis of Moravia, one of his cronies, died  at some party in Warsaw. Havelberg did not linger to be charged with murder, nor was he ever tried in his absence, but his own country was suddenly too hot to hold him.    Since then all his lands and money have reverted to the German crown, and he has wandered Europe, as penniless as he began, save for what he can earn as a con-man and a spy. It is curious that your Mr de León refers to him by name. He was in Paris calling himself Otto von Schill,  the last I knew of him.”

 

He had turned back to Friedrich of Havelberg’s entry. There were, unsurprisingly, no cuttings or notes after 1891.

 

Holmes sank into his chair, frowning, his fingers steepled against his chin.

 

“What a curious predicament,” he said. “You know I never let clients try to strew veils over the uglier parts of their cases, Watson. Yet he is _your_ prospective client, not mine, and he is not here to be told to state his business plainly or be on his way. And I cannot in conscience let the matter quite alone, for if Friedrich of Havelberg is in England at all, let alone _on business,_  it means somebody no good. He has yet to have a harmless reason for being anywhere.”

 

“And what about this Siegfried Wettin?” I asked. “It sounds as though this Mr Grey has been caught up in some feud between two career criminals.”

 

“It may be so,” said Holmes. “And if I were Siegfried Wettin, I would want to know exactly how Mr de León proposed to _resolve matters to his satisfaction._ ”

 

I read the sentences again. “Do you think he means murder?” I asked, alarmed, and found  I was reluctant to believe it.

 

“Oh, I conclude nothing yet. The letter is too peculiar for that.”

 

“Then what shall we do?”

 

“I shall have to look for Friedrich of Havelberg, I suppose.  And if Havelberg is here, I shall have to find out what he is doing.  It shouldn’t take long, but –“ Holmes’ expression darkened ominously, “I may have to visit some grim places.”

 

“But what do I do about this lettter – and  Nathan Grey?”

 

“Well, Watson, I do not know how to advise you,” said Holmes, smiling again, “besides warning you that if your client is a friend of Friedrich of Havelberg, he is either a villain or a fool.”

 

“He did not,” I murmured, “strike me as foolish.”

 

“Then we must draw alarming conclusions. Nevertheless, I don’t see any great harm in taking a cab to Queen Street, if you are curious about Mr Grey. You have at least the chance of saving his life and claiming a fine fee from his grateful patron – that must be some incentive to a gambling man. As for me, I shall smoke a pipe or two here, and then I suppose there is nothing for it but to head over to Chelsea and inveigle myself into fashionable salons.”

 

I might have been amused that salons in Chelsea were apparently the grim places of which he had spoken. But I was too preoccupied for laughter.  “No,” I blurted out, through a suddenly tight throat. Holmes looked up in surprise. “This Friedrich fellow, if he’s all you say... might he not have, well...” It was absurd that I still had a faint superstitious unease about speaking the name. “Might he not have some connection with Professor Moriarty?”

 

I had not forgotten, nor was I ever likely to forget, what had happened the last time a letter of dubious provenance begging my help had summoned me away from my friend’s side.

 

Something I could not name rippled across Holmes’ expression. “My dear Watson,” he said quietly and then lowered his eyes almost as if he could not stand to hold my gaze. “Friedrich of Havelberg is no Moran,” he went on, at last. “He might have had dealings with Moriarty, perhaps – but as one man of business to another, not a vassal to his lord. He has no loyalty to anyone, certainly not to our late foe. You need not fear he would try to avenge his death.”

 

“Still,” I said.  “Until matters are clearer I think we should be cautious.  Besides, you would see more in Mr Grey and Queen Street than I will.”

 

“Really, Watson,” began Holmes impatiently, “If you would only endeavour to apply the methods you have observed again and again – “ but he stopped. “Very well,” he conceded, “If you are going to hang about there all week I cannot promise to accompany you,  but for now, we will go together.”

 

*

 

The cab moved slowly and warily, for the fog had thinned but not vanished. Deptford, when we reached it, looked as dingy as if seen through tobacco-stained net curtains. Still, while neither clean or smart, the High Street was frantic with trade: costers bawling their way up and down its length, butchers and fishmongers’ garish with animal corpses, brass founders, gasfitters, as well as businesses of a more sedate cast --- surveyors, chemists,  and, I was grateful to see, a number of coffee-houses.   But London is full of abrupt shifts of tone, and  Queen Street was one of them: it slunk sadly away from this scene of rough-and-tumble vitality, degenerating as it went through  fallen slates and  blackened walls, until its furthest reaches were little more than a slum. Number 33 stood, as if caught between misery and hope, on the corner that adjoined the High Street, and the side that faced the road housed a stationers. There were private rooms both above and behind it: a step further into Queen Street and we encountered a black-painted door in crisper condition than its immediate neighbour, with a modest brass name plate fixed beside the bell, bearing the slogan “Nathan Grey, teacher of Latin.”

 

“The man appears to exist,” I said.

 

We eyed the windows. I could make out a glow of  gaslight behind gauze inside, though it would have done little to dispel the gloom of the day.  

“That plate is not above two months old,” murmured Holmes. “But the doorbell has been in constant use all that time. If he has fallen a step or two from Lincoln’s Inn, but at least he seems as sought-after as a Latin tutor could wish to be.”  He glanced at his watch. “Twenty minutes to twelve. He is almost certainly with a student. Safe to suppose lessons begin and end on the hour, wouldn’t you say?”

 

Rather than stand about on the corner for those twenty minutes, we passed the time in  nearby coffee house, and then returned to Queen Street.  We were in luck. The door opened, and anxious-looking young man emerged onto the dirty cobbles, stowing a sheaf of papers away in a briefcase, and Nathan Grey came out onto the step behind him.

 

“Now, don’t spend the whole night cramming.” He had a clear, deep, pleasant voice. “You’ve done enough. The surest way to render it all useless is to walk into the exam hall  exhausted.”

 

The youth thanked him and hurried away, but Grey did not go back inside. He strode out onto the High Street and made for a newspaper vendor under the railway viaduct.

 

At a careful distance, Holmes and I followed.

 

There was no doubt we were looking at the man the letter had described. Grey’s hair matched his name perhaps more closely than de León had implied, though there were still broad streaks of the original black above his forehead, and the scar was worse than I had imagined: a wide crumpled sigil carved deep into the flesh above one dark, horizontal brow, yet it had not spoiled the sombre beauty of his lean, square-cut face.  Álvaro de León had not remarked that  Nathan Grey was  handsome, nor that he was profoundly unhappy.

 

The latter conviction struck me like a physical blow. I was sure that it was more than sorrow at his decline in fortunes.  I could _see_ him wading his way through a depth of familiar shadow; I saw the weight of it, dragging on his every step.  Nathan Grey was not wearing mourning, but to me his grief was as painfully plain as if I had seen him leading a procession of crape-swaddled mutes down the street.

 

Holmes’ scrutiny was more to the point, of course: “Álvaro de León has not altogether lied to us. Mr Grey believes he is in danger, and has believed it for a long time.”

 

“How can you be sure?” I asked, although my knowledge of his methods allowed me almost to predict the answer.  And yet if I had known every word of it in advance I should have loved to listen to it. I had always been captivated by his deductions, and   when I had believed him dead I had written out scores of them from memory; drawing a little chilly comfort from the memory of his voice and the wonder of watching that falcon-winged mind in full flight.  Yet whenever he began to lead me through an entirely new set of observation it seemed I was only now discovering how much I’d missed him.

 

“The way he carries his shoulders,” said Holmes, eyes still intent upon Grey as he made his way back to his lodgings, “always a little raised. And mark the movements of his eyes, especially when he passes a turning or a doorway, where someone might come at him from the side. You will often see criminals deport themselves so. But a nervous criminal could not have passed that policeman coming out of the tobacconist’s  without growing more nervous, and Mr Grey did not react at all. And do you observe how he carries his keys?”

 

 “In his hand,” I said, “So he could not be waylaid at his door while he searched his pockets for them.”

 

“Good!”  said Holmes, with rare teacherly satisfaction, though I’m afraid that had he not prompted me, I should never have realised I had noticed Mr Grey’s keys at all. “And with the pins jutting out between his knuckles, to give more force to a blow. And all this in broad daylight, if we stretch the phrase.” For the sheets of fog still lingered about us. “Well, as his bodyguard, your employer assures you   that you need watch for nothing so subtle, only assassins lumbering at him with guns. Do you mean to take the job?”

 

I suddenly realised what an awkward situation I was in. I should hardly have relished the prospect of a week loitering around Deptford, even without the lingering fear we were the victims of some obscure and perhaps criminal ploy.  Yet if Holmes confirmed that Mr Grey was indeed in such severe danger, how could I leave him entirely alone? And as de León himself had said, there was no way of handing over the task to the police.

 

And if the police would not do it, I thought, why on earth should I?  

 

“You are going to do exactly as Mr de León asks of you, are you not,”  Holmes stated.

 

“I suppose I might at least wait here a few hours,” I sighed.

 

Holmes’ quick smile flashed across his face, “And I had thought myself the one man permitted to impose on you so thoroughly. You have rather a talent for being exploited, Watson.”

 

“The circumstances  are peculiar,” I said glumly.

 

Holmes’ eyes strayed back to the door of 33a. We had another glimpse of the tutor when he opened the door to a pair of schoolboys and  Holmes stared,   his lips drawn into a taut line of frustrated effort.

 

“What is it?” I asked.

 

“ _I don’t know_ ,” Holmes snapped, though the anger in his voice was not with me. “There is _something_ ,  but—” he shook his head.  

 

Grey ushered his pupils inside and closed the door.

“He has lost someone,” I murmured.

 

Holmes looked at me, but rather to my surprise neither asked me why I thought I knew any such thing, nor confirmed my intuition by any deduction of his own.

 

“Well, you must do as conscience compels you. There is a telegraph office at the end of the High Street: You will oblige me by wiring Baker Street at a quarter past each hour to say whether you are staying or coming home. If you are late, Mrs Hudson will summon the police.”

 

“That’s a bit excessive, isn’t it?” I said, startled.

 

“Watson, you as good as refused to let me leave the house alone this morning,“ Holmes reminded me. “Álvaro do Leon has made us dance to his tune very ably; the steps may lead us to Havelberg, but I don’t like it.  You forgot this.”

 

He slipped my revolver from his own pocket into mine  and raised an eyebrow at my surprise. “Didn’t Mr de León choose you, in part, for your skills as a marksman? And what use is a bodyguard unarmed?”  

 

And with that he strode away and left me to my vigil.


	3. Chapter 3

 

I have waited and watched alongside Holmes many times, but never had the vigil been so public, and never before had the responsibility for secrecy rested  upon me alone. Holmes, I suppose, would have effortlessly come up with as many disguises  as there were hours in the day. I, on the other hand, felt horribly conspicuous.  For the first few hours I patrolled the streets about Mr Grey’s home, trudged to and from the telegraph office and each time sent word I would wait a little longer.  Sometimes I ducked into a coffeehouse when the pre-emptive embarrassment at being caught loitering became too acute. Still, I did  watch  every student leave and enter 33a and satisfied myself their teacher remained in decent health.  I did not see the two men de León had described, and wondered irritably if they truly existed. However, the dismal season made my task a little easier, if no more pleasant. After three, the fog thickened,  the streets emptied and I was able to stand right beside Mr Grey’s door with very little risk of being observed.  Indeed, I could not have kept watch from any greater distance. I remembered my own thought from the night before -- that one might pass silent watchers in the fog while believing oneself alone,  and now I was the unseen presence in the vapour.

 

 

By four, even the dirty, opaque light that the fog allowed through was vanishing, and I was preoccupied with the question of how on earth I was to extricate myself. I would certainly _not_ stand there all night. Yet, I worried, wouldn’t Mr Grey be in worse danger after dark than before? Then I would  think how ridiculous the whole thing was,  then remember Mr Grey’s scar and that Holmes had confirmed he was in danger. Then I would chase around the whole cycle of thoughts again.

 

Deptford’s churchbells were chiming five, when a light hand on my elbow made me start.

 

“I don’t expect you to work the night shift,” said Álvaro de León, smiling. At least, there was a smile in his voice. Once again I could not see his face.

 

 “Good,” I said. “In that case I shall bid you a good evening.”

 

“Wait a moment,” hissed de León, and drew me back closer against the wall of number 33. We stood, motionless, as a pair of women and a young man passed within a foot of us and approached the door. One of them rang Grey’s bell.

 

“Mr Grey?” said a young woman’s voice, “Are you busy, or can you come over? You know we were going to read  _Two Gentlemen of Verona._ You can’t leave Tom to read _all_ the male parts.”

 

They extracted Nathan Grey from his solitary rooms and bustled him away down the High Street.

 

“He is among friends,” said Mr de León with a hint of a sigh. “The postmistress and her children; they feel rather starved of genteel company. The lady is sorry for him and I suppose the girl is half in love with him.   And Wettin knows better than to attack a target in the presence of so many witnesses; besides, the young man is a veteran of the Sikkim Expedition. We may consider ourselves relieved of duty for now. You are frozen, doctor --  these old injuries, the cold punishes us for them, I know – and  I am sorry.  Come with me.”

 

“Can’t we discreetly warn them their friend needs more of their kindly attention?” I asked, a little sourly.

 

“That would amount to telling him, for they would none of them keep it quiet for five minutes. One cannot blame them. If I told you Mr Holmes was in danger but you must on no account tell him, you would not find that easy, would you?”

 

It was not a question I liked. But de León took my arm in a friendly yet uncompromising grasp and steered me across the street. His limp was indeed worse than when I had seen him last, but we did not have far to walk. He led me over to the doors of the White Swan, a large tavern I had passed several times with increasing longing on my journeys to and from the telegraph office . . .

 

The telegraph office.

 

“One moment,” I said, freeing myself. “Go inside, I will join you.”

 

The message I sent to Baker Street was brief.

 

DE LEON HERE.  WHITE SWAN.

 

But I had no way of knowing if Holmes had yet returned from his own errands.  I returned to the Swan, determined to keep de León there as long, and learn as much as I could. Besides, I was now so cold and stiff that the prospect of making my way home through the foggy city without a brief interlude of warmth was almost intolerable.  

 

De Leon had found us a table. I had a moment to observe him before he noticed my approach: he was cupping some warm drink in both hands and looking around the cosy inn --  the cheerful patrons with their pipes and tankards, the glow of the firelight reflected dimly in the dark panelling -- his face lit with inexplicable delight.   He met my eyes as I sat down and exclaimed,  “Oh, I _love_ places like this!”

 

His enthusiasm was so unexpected, and seemed so artlessly sincere, that I found myself smiling back despite myself. And yet despite that outburst of childlike glee, I could see by the tavern’s gaslight that he _was_ older than I had first thought. His face retained the clear outlines of youth and his skin was fine-grained with pure colour in the lips and cheeks, yet when he smiled there were feathered lines around his eyes that did not belong on a young man’s face. And even without that, there was something indefinable in the eyes themselves that was older, and sad even under the merriment.  Not a lad in his twenties, after all, then – perhaps scarcely younger than  I was --  yet the years sat so oddly on him that it remained difficult to place him squarely at any stage of life.

 

His eyes were green, though so subtle and complex and shifting a green that it was almost as hard to give the colour its name as to place the man’s age.

 

He pushed a drink towards me. It was a concoction of hot lemon and rum; something I should never have ordered for myself, but I found it chased the chill from my aching body faster than I could have thought, and I was heartily grateful for it.

 

“A tedious day’s work, doctor, I know,” he said sympathetically. ”I hope this is sufficient to pay for it.”

 

I stared down at the envelope he laid on the table-top. A hundred half-formed and paranoid fantasies chased themselves through my head. Where did this man get his money? Where had he been all day? And what work was I really about, hanging about on a street corner all day long, fancying myself warding off some danger? Was I as much an imbecile as Jabez Wilson, copying out the encyclopaedia while John Clay tunnelled through his wall?

 

“Cash is all right, I hope?”, said Mr de León. “I cannot be certain of staying here long enough to open a bank account.”

 

“I cannot accept it,” I said quietly.

 

“Doctor! To spend all day standing in the cold and fog for nothing!”

 

“I can’t,” I repeated. “I’m sorry, Mr de León, but I cannot take your money when I know so very little of –”

 

Mr de León looked at me meditatively, then suddenly pounced across the table and tucked the envelope of cash into my breast pocket before I had even finished speaking. Then he sat back, quietly delighted with himself.

 

I found myself suppressing another smile, and sighed, “Fine.”

 

For all I knew his intentions could be read plain in the weave of the envelope.  Holmes would  have scolded me for turning down such a clue. I would hand it in to the police as evidence, if it came to it.

 

“Your letter left me no way of contacting you,” I said, as Mr de León toasted his own victory with a cheerful swig of his drink.

 

“How careless of me,” said de León. And I remembered Holmes’ account of how the text of the letter had been _drawn_ rather than written.

 

“It did not seem careless. It seemed a studied omission,” I said.

 

Álvaro de León sat and smiled.

 

“Mr de León, you can’t think I am so stupid as not to know you are concealing something from me -- many things, I think,  that concern this . . . work you wish me to do. So how can I continue to help you?  How can I trust you?”

 

De Leon’s face grew sadder. “I promise I do not mean you any harm, or to entangle you in anything shameful,” he said gently.  “And  I am sorry I forgot to give you my address. We move about so much, Havelberg and I, half the time I am in danger of forgetting where I rest my head altogether. But if you need me again, you can find us at the Hôtel des Étrangers, in Gerrard Street.”

 

I tried to read either candour or its opposite in his eyes, failed, and silently willed Holmes to arrive soon. “Who is Siegfried Wettin?”I asked.

 

“A wicked man,” said de León. “A scavenger. A murderer.”

 

“So is your friend the Count.”

 

“Poor Havelberg!” cried  de León, with such a wide-eyed expression of guilelessness that the foxy face looked quite idiotic for a moment. “There has never been anything against him but gossip.”

 

“Very well. What are you planning to do to Siegfried Wettin?” I asked.

 

“I am planning to do nothing at all to Siegfried Wettin,” said de León, with, nevertheless, a decidedly grim air of resolution.

 

“ _I expect matters with  Siegfried Wettin will be resolved to my satisfaction by the end of the week’”_ I quoted. _“_ What did you mean by that?”

 

De Leon drummed his fingers on the tabletop.

 

“Where _is_ he, then?”

 

“I have had some difficulty pinning him down precisely,” said de León, a mirthless smile now warping the smooth lips. ”But it will not be long now. I wish you would drop the subject, Dr Watson. You do not know how particularly painful it is to me, and unfortunately I am not in a position to explain it further.”

 

He had tensed so noticeably that I feared further questioning would only drive him out of the tavern. Without premeditation I appealed:    “Please don’t. Whatever it is you’re planning, don’t do it. You’re mixed up in something dangerous, I can see that.  We can help you – help you _better_ – if you trust us. There’s another way, I’m sure of it.”

 

De Leon closed his eyes, and for a moment such exhaustion and sorrow showed in the lines of his face that I could not help but feel far more concern for him than the stranger I feared might be his victim. “I am afraid not,” he murmured.

 

People do not often realise,  I think, how compassion, even entirely sincere compassion, can be an instrument as delicate yet potent as a surgeon’s scalpel.  I was incapable of seeing the suffering in his face without an answering pang, yet in that I sensed the possibility of an advantage.  “It’s been very hard,” I said, gently, “whatever has happened to drive you to this. I don’t know you, and I don’t understand what you’re doing, but I don’t believe you’d go to these lengths over nothing. Wettin has wronged you very badly, has he not? You said he was a murderer.”  I thought de León suppressed a flinch. “Whom did he kill?”

 

“Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t. You’re a kind man; I knew that already. And I do need your help; but not your sympathy. Sympathy will undo me at present.” He rose to his feet. “As for why I cannot tell you more, you may consider what I have told you of why I dare not take Nathan Grey into my plans.”

 

He hurried out of the tavern.

 

Holmes arrived about ten minutes afterwards and took in by a glance at the glasses on the table what had happened. “He cannot have gone far,” he said by way of greeting. 

 

“No, I think we should try the postmaster’s house. Grey is there.”

 

I knew well enough where to find the post office from my patrols about the streets.  We hurried north to where it stood on the corner with Flagon Row.

 

But in the darkness and the fog, we had little hope of observing Mr de León from any distance. We found him leaning against the wall of the postmaster’s house, and he saw us in the same moment that we saw him.

 

“Gentlemen,” he called. “Good evening to you both.”

“Mr de León,”  Holmes replied, “Dr Watson has told me of you.”

 “And of course,” sang  de León blithely, “he has told the world of _you_!”

 I could feel Holmes bristle subtly beside me, but he said only:  “I hope to make your better acquaintance.”

“And I yours,”  said de León. “But alas, not yet.”

 

Then the fog swallowed him up so immediately that it was as if he had vanished in a genie’s puff of smoke. Holmes pelted after him. I stayed where I was: a day on the cold streets had worn too hard at my old injuries to leave me any sane hope of catching up.

 

Holmes soon returned, alone and unamused. “Irritating creature, this client of yours,” he said.

*

 

“I wish you’d seen him properly,” I said, as we approached our front door at last. “I keep trying to imagine what kind of history might produce such a singular person, but I really can’t make him out at all.”

 

“Yes, yes, you’ve impressed that upon me _quite_ thoroughly, Watson,” said Holmes, whose mood had not improved. “He will turn out to an utterly ordinary little con-man.”  

 

I felt oddly compelled to defend de León from such a charge – I hated to think that he was not, at the very least, an _extraordinary_ con-man. “No, I can’t believe that.  Think of that trick with the handwriting, you said yourself that was the work of a remarkable individual. And he has this --  I don’t know, this way of looking at you -- he’d stand out anywhere as _something_ out of the ordinary.  I wish you’d seen him properly, you’d understand what I meant. Oh – he gave me this.” We had reached our sitting room, where I lit the lamps and handed over the envelope filled with cash.  “And he said he and Havelberg were at the Hôtel des Étrangers.  But I don’t know, I can’t help feeling he won’t be so easy to find.”

 

“Indeed, one might almost suppose that a man who runs away from us into the fog doesn’t want to talk to us,” agreed Holmes sourly, casting himself into his chair and studying the envelope.

 

“His eyes were green,” I volunteered. “An odd kind of green, though --  gold and grey mixed up in it somehow, all shifting, like... I don’t know, are there green opals, do you suppose?”

 

For a moment I lost myself rather pleasurably in trying to recall those eyes, and then I noticed that Holmes was looking at me  decidedly oddly. One has to accustom oneself to being looked at oddly if one is going to share lodgings with Sherlock Holmes, but it is usually a matter of either being looked _through,_ or of being pinned with a swift, ruthless glance in which all one’s recent doings are mercilessly revealed. This was quite different. Holmes’ brows were contracted and his lips slightly parted. He looked confounded, and, I might almost have said, _hurt..._

 

“What is it?” I asked.

 

Holmes resumed scowling at the envelope. “You have spent your time most profitably, gazing into your client’s eyes.”

 

“I saw him far more clearly this evening than in the fog last night, I thought you might want a more exact description, “ I protested, beginning to feel rather foolish and yet not being quite certain why.

 

“Watson, do you really foresee a circumstance in which I have him at such close quarters as to be able to peruse the depths of the man’s _eyes_ , and yet only by gauging their _opaline_ qualitieswill I succeed in identifying him?”

 

I looked down, abashed, but said, “Well. No, though it would hardly be the strangest incident of your career.”

 

“If you could be persuaded to look at a person’s _shoes_ for once in your life we might make further headway,” retorted Holmes with unaccountable vehemence, then sprang up and  stalked into his bedroom and I saw no more of him that night.

 


	4. Chapter 4

If that night he had been  scathing, even by his own caustic standards, he was unusually conciliatory the following morning. He filled my coffee cup, which was usually the most I could expect by way of apology for any recent cantankerousness, but on this occasion to my great surprise he went so far as to say, “I am sorry, Watson. I was rather revolting to you last night, wasn’t I?

 

“Yes, you were,” I said, despite my surprise.

 

Holmes laughed sheepishly. “Once upon a time, Watson, you were far too polite to agree with a statement like that.”

 

 “No, you used to overawe me into cowardly shyness. Politeness had nothing to do with it.”

 

 “Ah.”Holmes laid down his coffee cup and  contemplated this for a while, apparently at once amused and a little dismayed. I suppose it should not have surprised me he had not understood this before. “And you got over it.”

 

I chuckled. “Yes, but I was longer about it than I was getting over the Afghan campaign, so I hope your self-respect need not be much dented. I have lingering relapses yet.”

 

I had not thought much before about the differences between this second sojourn at Baker Street and the first. Perhaps I should rather have been surprised that after all those years, my marriage, his death and resurrection, so much remained the same. But thirteen years before I should not have dared to tease him so. I still admired him more than any man living, but  he was a man to me now, no longer a wounded demigod.

 

 “In any case, I am sorry to have taken out a tiresome day on you,” Holmes said. “Especially as your own must have been still less comfortable. But I spent the afternoon being positively unctuous to Lady Farringdon, Lady Claremont and Mrs Flyte for no practical gain at all.”

 

I found it impossible to imagine my friend being unctuous to anyone and felt quite  sorry I had not been there to witness the attempt.

 

“You hoped one of them might lead you to Havelberg?”

 

“Havelberg is used to moving in fashionable circles,” Holmes said. “He needs wealthy people with sordid business to be done. And whatever name he is using, he is just glamorous and just scandalous enough to appeal to exactly the kind of  hostess who...”

 

“...who would dearly love to capture  and display  Sherlock Holmes as a trophy in her salon?”

 

Holmes growled softly.

 

It was then that Billy tapped on the door with the post, which small stack of messages was dominated by  a large, stiff  envelope of creamily expensive paper. And there was also a note for me, in Álvaro de León’s strange, crafted handwriting.

 

            “ _Dear Dr Watson,_

_I hope I will not put you to any inconvenience by informing you your services will not be required today until late this afternoon. Mr Grey is invigilating exams at The College of Preceptors in Southampton Row, as a favour to a friend who is sick. I am confident of his safety while he is thus employed, and shall watch his way there.  If you would watch him home to Queen Street that will suffice. Please assume you will be needed tomorrow unless you hear from me again. Apologies._

_A d L_ “

 

Meanwhile, Holmes had grunted dismissively at his own post and reached peremptorily for mine. I purloined his in exchange and found the large envelope, as I had surmised, an invitation.

 

“A masked ball!” I exclaimed. 

 

“Yes, Mrs Flyte has great hopes for it, despite being out of season.  And you sound almost wistful, Watson,” Holmes accused me, holding the envelope up to the light to examine the postmark.

 

“Well, it does sounds rather amusing,” I said. It had been a very long time since I had danced.

 

“I should have guessed you would find it so,” said Holmes. He sounded supercilious and yet somehow did not look at it. He lowered his eyes and said to the edge of the table, “I should rather like to see you again in that black silk mask you made for the Milverton case. You remember?”

 

“Of course I do,” I said.

 

“I wonder what happened to them,” said Holmes softly, and for a moment we were both silent.  

 

“Do you gather anything from the letter?” I asked.

Holmes sighed. “He was writing late at night by a tallow candle. It was posted in Deptford. He was certainly _not,_ therefore, in the Hôtel des Étrangers, and yet I think we might as well eliminate it from consideration as Havelberg’s bolthole before we try intercepting your Mr de León at the school. Will you accompany me?”

 

It had not occurred to me there was any other possibility.

 

*

 

Soho was  stewing in fog thick and brown as Turkish coffee, and the lamps were all unlit. An  occasional wind snatched aside curtains of the muddy vapour to reveal gaudily dressed women , a faded French restaurant.  The Hôtel des Étrangers might have been a rather fine place in a modest way a decade or two back, before almost every trace of respectability that had lingered after the cholera outbreak gathered its skirts and fled Soho to Marylebone and Mayfair. Even now it wore a faintly desperate air of rakish gentility, like a drunken man straining every sinew not to slur his words. It stands three narrow storeys high, and has around twenty rooms. Short of burgling them all, we had no immediate recourse but the most straightforward.

 

The proprietor was himself a German. Holmes exchanged a few friendly remarks with him in that language then, I suppose for my benefit, asked “Have you a guest by name of Otto von Schill? A German gentleman of aristocratic bearing,”

 

“We have many such guests,” said the proprietor stoutly.

 

 “He is forty-five years old, blond hair, blue eyes, and over six foot four. He has a small scar from a fencing accident on his cheek – likely the left, but deplorably the descriptions I have read do not specify.”

 

The man’s face lifted suddenly. “Ah! We did have a gentleman looking so! But oh... he is gone three months ago. I am sorry disappoint you,” he said, looking rather disappointed himself that the drama was ending before it had even begun.

 

“Do you remember the name he was using? No? But you must have a register.”

 

Mr Hoffman duly produced it and within mere seconds Holmes had plucked out the name “Alois Wertheim. -- No more a natural signature than Mr de León writes to you in natural handwriting, Watson.  Room 19. Is it currently occupied?”

 “We have guests there, _ja_ , but they go out today.”

 

 “Then might we see?”

           

 

Mr Hoffmann might have been a little wistful for drama, yet he was keenly sensitive to any hint of a slight on his hotel’s respectability.

 

“The room have been cleaned several times,” he complained as he led us up the stairs and along the narrow corridor on the third floor. “It have been cleaned this morning. See, it is like new!”he concluded, unlocking the door and throwing it open with a flourish.

 

 “It is currently occupied by a dark-haired Frenchman of below average height and a red-headed Englishwoman most unlikely to be his wife,” responded Holmes placidly. Mr Hoffman’s mouth fell open and Holmes, gliding into the centre of the room, smiled pityingly at him. “Come, Mr Hoffman, that was scarcely worthy of me. Comb  and hairbrush on the dresser, one set of suitcases by the writing table? The air redolent with cheap violet perfume popular among ladies of the London music halls? Your guests might as well be standing waiting to shake hands.  To trace a man three months gone, however...”

 

 “It is impossible,” said Mr Hoffmann,  making an attempt to recover himself.

 

Holmes  rotated slowly, gaze skimming over the room’s unremarkable surfaces, and I could see Hoffmann and I were  dismissed, for the time being, from his consciousness.

 

“Your chambermaids,” he asked abruptly, allowing us to exist again. “Are they all women?”

 

Mr Hoffman blinked. “Yes,” he said. “We have no male chambermaids.”

 

 “Are any of them unusually tall? Six foot or more? ”

 

Mr Hoffman stared. Holmes gestured impatiently. “Chambermaids of six foot high?!” exclaimed the hotelier at last. “No, we have all ordinary-size women.”   

 

 “Excellent.” Holmes drew an imaginary line in the air, a little above his own shoulder level: “Then it is from here and up that we must look for our quarry’s traces.” He dragged a footstool into the centre and sprang up on it. “A tall man’s reach – even the scope of his casual gestures – extends well above an ordinary-sized chambermaid’s eye-level – “

 

 “They have feather-dusters!” protested Mr Hoffman. “On sticks!”

 

Holmes’ smile glimmered for an instant. “And I can already tell you, Herr Hoffman, they are not over-scrupulous with them, for which I hope you will pass on my earnest thanks. Hmm.” With a small flourish he reached up and detached a short, colourlessly blond hair from the pendent lamp. “And see here –“

 

He sprang from his vantage point to the door and showed us a very faint, very tiny smudge of something pink on the very edge of the door frame, barely an inch from the top.

 

And here, were this story destined for publication, I should have to do just a little veiling and obfuscating of what followed.

 

 “He had a female guest himself,” said Holmes. “That is rouge, I think. He was standing with his back to the door, and he must have lifted his hand from her face to grasp at the moulding.”

 

It is utterly natural to my friend to act out his deductions as they occur to him, either to assist the deductions themselves or to illustrate them to the admiring audience, that is, to me. He will aim an imaginary gun to indicate the angle of a shot, climb a mantelpiece to demonstrate the height of the man who had severed a bell-rope. Sometimes I would even find myself dragged into a scene to play the part of victim or accomplice.    So of course, now, he was enacting his subject’s posture as he spoke, turning to rest  his shoulders against the door, his hand reaching downwards to skim a point a little in front of him, then gracefully lifting to flutter against the woodwork beside his head. There was nothing indecent about it – it was only the lightest sketch of what had taken place  --  but it was nevertheless a very clear one. In an instant it was  extraordinarily obvious what Havelberg and his companion had been doing, and behind me, Hoffmann gave a mildly scandalised grunt. With part of my mind, I wondered if a hotelier could genuinely be shocked at a passing acknowledgement between gentlemen of what a single man might get up to in a hotel room.

 

 I, being an old campaigner, and a doctor, was not shocked.

 

Or rather, I was – I was very shocked indeed – but not at all in the same way.

 

The performance did not touch my friend’s face, his eyes were open and bright with understanding and discovery (and of all his expressions, that one is perhaps dearest to me) but he had tipped his head back just a little, exposing the line of his throat.  I saw the cuff of his shirt slipping back from his slender wrist, his long fingers curling around the wood, hinting, for the briefest instant and in the most minimal way, at a man in sexual ecstasy. And, for the first time, for a searing instant, I pictured him so – my friend, not Havelberg, unstrung in the moment of bliss.

 

And quite without my permission, my mind went further; I found myself picturing how – _someone –_ might have pressed him closer to the door, how lips might have skimmed the bare skin of his throat, how hands might have parted his clothes and caressed him until those brilliant eyes closed and silence deserted him  – all this even as Holmes, blithely absorbed in his work, leapt back to the centre of the room in one long stride, stood motionless for a split-second upon the foot stool and then was at the windows, pinching a few specks of ash from the upper surface of the sash.   

 

 “And here... he was smoking, pacing to and fro before the windows, I think,” he announced. He sniffed delicately at the crumbs of tobacco. “Danneman’s dry cure cigarillos... a nostalgic choice for a wandering prince.”

 

 “Holmes,” I asked, “what is the use of this? Mr Hoffmann has already told us he was here three months ago – how is cigarette ash or rouge to tell us where he  is now?”

 

It was more an attempt to clear those involuntary images away than a genuine question,  and I fear I sounded a bluff caricature of myself. Holmes, of course, ignored me. He had pounced across the room to the tall book case containing a small library of French, German and Italian classic, handsomely bound and so pristine they must have been treated with either great respect or great indifference by the room’s occupants.   

 

 “Ah..!” Holmes breathed, as he drew something out from between two volumes on the topmost shelf.

 

It was an empty matchbook. Holmes held it delicately, between finger and thumb, and smiled in quiet rapture  as if it were  a priceless gem.

 

“You will agree  it is most _unlikely_ this was placed here by anybody other than our man, Watson?” he asked,  “The shelf is in reach, certainly, for shorter persons, but some slight effort would be made; and one does not expend effort to absently poke a used matchbook out of the way.”

 

“Yes,” I said.

 

Holmes’ smile broadened. He handed his prize over to me.

 

I suppose soon there will be scarce a blank surface left in London, or perhaps in the world. In these last few years, not content with the sides of omnibuses and the walls of the Underground railway,   advertisements have begun to colonise even the tiniest spaces. 

 

In this case, the little square of cardboard was printed with the following text:

 

Starling Club

111 Bruton Street, W1

 

*

 “One more thing, Mr Hoffman,” said Holmes in the lobby, before we released the harassed hotelier to go and berate his cleaning staff in peace. “Did Herr Wertheim share his rooms with or entertain as a visitor a  slightly-built man with curly reddish hair and green eyes? If you are at all uncertain Dr Watson will be delighted to furnish you with an _exhaustive_ description.”

 

Mr Hoffmann shook his head. “If a guest has visitors, perhaps we are not always knowing, “ he said, and flushed, transparently remembering my friend’s brief pantomime in the room upstairs.  “But another guest? With Herr Wertheim? And looking so? No.”

 

 “Your Mr de León tells the most peculiar lies,” mused Holmes as we progressed to the Strand. “I wonder where we  will find his place in all this?”

 

A cab drew up – an ability to summon cabs out of nowhere ranks among Holmes more minor magical talents. I climbed in after him in silence.   I  was still  very disquieted by the intensity of what had flashed through my mind in that room. Yet perhaps I was not so disturbed as might have been expected. After all, one does think strange things, at times. One imagines hurling oneself under a train, flinging a precious keepsake into the Thames, putting one’s hand in the fire. One has no real desire to do it. (Though, as I thought as much, I found myself acknowledging that my mind had played reluctant host to such unpleasant guests far more often during those bleak years of doubled mourning than it had since my friend’s return).  There is real misery enough in the world, I see no reason to chase down the mind’s phantasms and clad them in sack-cloth and ashes to create more.

 

I had other, less respectable reasons for a certain leniency towards myself, perhaps I shall come to some of them later.  For now, I may as well be candid here about this much:

 

I said it was the first time I had pictured what it might be like were my friend not coldly aloof to the great array of experience that, in my publishable writings, I label discreetly “the softer emotions.”

 

I might say with greater honesty, it was the first time _in many years_.

 

The cab bounced us along towards Baker Street and I watched London through the fog,  aware of the warmth of my friend’s body through the layers of clothing between us, and the faint scent of pipe smoke and gunpowder that I always associated with his presence. I gave the thoughts space to pass by and soon enough, they did so.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realise I forgot to thank Jenlee1 on Livejournal for helping me talk through ideas about a gazillion years ago when I was planning this out.
> 
> This story isn't beta'd -- if you spot an unfinished sentence, typo or other mistake, please do let me know!

 

Holmes and his brother may be the most unclubbable men in London, yet I was unsurprised that the one expected the other to be able to secure him an invitation into practically any establishment he wished. A brief exchange of telegrams duly  confirmed that Holmes would have no difficulty gaining admission to the Starling Club.  I was surprised, however,  when having emerged from his bedroom with curling sideburns and – already – a heavy accent I could not identify, Holmes invited me to accompany him.

 

“Ah, for you, we shall think of something,” said Holmes. “I am become a deputy military attaché to the Ruritanian Embassy. You might be an employee of the Foreign Office, assisting me, no? You need not speak much.”

 

“But what about Nathan Grey? de León wants me to go and watch after  him...”

 

“Blast Nathan Grey,” said Holmes, his voice reverting to England.

 

 “Well, suppose someone _does_ blast him?  I know de León has told us more lies than truths, but you said Grey _did_ believe himself in danger, and if something were to happen that I might have prevented... besides, de León is mixed up somehow in whatever Havelberg’s doing here; we wouldn’t even know he was in England without him; nor would we have found out anything today if I hadn’t done as de León asked yesterday.”

 

Holmes nodded shortly. “You are right, of course,” he said, pulling on his gloves. “I shall perhaps see you at Southampton Row, if I finish soon enough. Keep your revolver with you.”

 

I felt an odd little tug of regret as he set off; so often, when he subsumed himself in a role this way, I had only the chance to see the very beginning or very end of it. I should have liked to watch the thing all the way through. And as he turned towards the door, I thought for a moment he had looked unhappy.

*

Álvaro de León had at least been truthful in saying that the College of Preceptors was, holding entrance examinations at its halls on Southampton Row. After learning as much from a porter, I then had nothing to do but loiter for over an hour, failing even to establish that Nathan Grey was in the building, my difficulties in this case greatly exacerbated by the fog thickening all around like foul smoke.

 

Someone touched my arm, and I turned half-expecting Álvaro de León, but found Holmes there instead. He was still wearing the sideburns  of his adopted persona, yet the Ruritanian spy had vanished from his expression. He was smiling delightedly, all trace of despondency vanished.

 

“You’ve found Havelberg,” I said at once.

 

“Yes, he has been an honorary member of the Starling Club these last three months. It is not at all a bad hunting ground for a freelance spy; there are a number of vaguely discontented and stupid aristocrats with friends in Whitehall, and a ready supply of decent cigars and periodicals.”

 

“He was actually there?”   

 

“Ah, no, and I do not yet know where he is. But I know where he is going to be.”

 

Nowadays I may feel some slight, indulgent amusement at how Holmes, who has the gall to complain about melodrama in my stories, will baldly wring all the suspense he can from any narrative of his own investigations so that he may more thoroughly enjoy my curiosity. But that does not make my curiosity any less sincere: “Where?”

 

 “At Mrs Flyte’s masked ball tomorrow night,” said Holmes, “as I shall be, and so I hope will you be. The Starling Club is surprisingly chary of its membership book; I might have stolen it with a little more effort, but probably at the cost of putting the cat among the pigeons. But the clerk there was quite ready to send him a telegram intimating that the Ruritanian crown is excessively concerned about the activities of Ruritanian dissidents in London, and willing to pay handsomely for assistance in harassing them, and also that I am not the only party at Mrs Flyte’s who might wish to  purchase his services – that last at least is probably true.”

 

“You’re sure that will bring him?”

 

“I mistake him greatly if it doesn’t, but I can always make a second attempt to burgle the book from the club. But what use have I for Havelberg in his private sitting room? It is Havelberg in his professional sphere that interests me.”

 

“What about masks?” I said. “I don’t think scraps of black silk will do this time.”

 

“It is my turn to provide the masks,” said Holmes.  “There’s your Mr Grey.”

 

Nathan Grey was, indeed, coming down the steps, his scarred brow furrowed with unease.

 

“I'll tell you another thing," said Holmes, thoughtfully. "I had Mycroft make some inquiries with the Bar Council. No one by the name of Nathan Grey was called to the bar in England at any time in the last thirty years. Follow him. I have preparations to make.”

 

I left him and made after Grey.

 

I dared not follow him too closely, but the offices and lecture halls of Holborn were disgorging their occupants into the foggy streets and it was considerably harder to keep him in sight than it had been when simply tracking him across the street in Deptford. I had expected, from the impression I had formed of his finances, that he take an omnibus, but at the corner of Bloomsbury Way, he leapt suddenly into a cab.

 

I deliberated but briefly. I thought it unlikely he would have the cab take him all the way; probably he would take a train from London Bridge.  It seemed less likely still he would be in any danger on between here and home, though I found unpleasant fancies crowding my head even as I thought so.

 

I decided it was useless to try to watch him along the journey;  I would have to make my way to Deptford and resume  my vigil there. I duly hailed a cab of my own and was at London Bridge within twenty  minutes, and hurrying along Deptford High Street by six o’clock.

 

33a’s windows were dark  I returned to my former station,  cloaked in fog and shadow beside the door. Had I overtaken him? He might have taken the cab only as far as Waterloo, perhaps, in which case it was not at all strange. Or perhaps he was meeting his friends at the post office. Or perhaps he had been waylaid and killed. I was trying to weigh how foolish this last thought might be in the face of the jumble of lies and snares Álvaro de León had laid for us, when I heard the sound that had set this adventure in motion. Approaching footsteps in the fog.

 

Two men this time. Neither of them was Nathan Grey, nor Mr de León.  They drew level with the door – scarcely five feet from me. I held utterly still. There was a brief flaring of a match. Far too little light to make out much, but I did see the taller of the two had  a bald, round, uncovered head.

 

 “Put that out,” snapped the bald one.

 

 “Just a quick drag,” said the other. “I need it in this chill.” And he was as good as his word, within half a minute the dark in Queen Street was all but absolute once more.

 

 “I don’t like doing it here,” the smoker  muttered.  “It’s too close to the High Street.”

 

 “It’s either here or in town, or we break in through a window and do it that way, and here’s the quietest.”

 

 “If he cries out—“

 

 “He won’t have a chance to cry out,” said the other impatiently. “And if he does, better do it now while there’s still a bit of noise to cover it. Lay him neat against the wall and he won’t even get found till tomorrow.”

 

A breath of wind stirred the fog a little, a scattering of light filtered through and I had another glimpse of the two silhouetted figures, standing so close. I scarcely breathed. I tried almost to melt into the brickwork at my back.  The shorter man had drawn something from his jacket, and was weighing it in his hand. Whether it was a knife or a cudgel I still could not make out.

 

 “Why should he be found at all? We could  dump him in the Creek after?”

 

 “If you think you can lug him all the way from here to the Creek with nobody noticing, you’re welcome to try it, but you’ll do it alone.”

 

And then there were more footsteps at the entrance of the street. The two assassins fell instantly silent. Mr Grey was coming home at last – and the murderers were as sure of it as I was.

 

My revolver has only once fired a shot at a human being since it accompanied me home from Afghanistan, and I would not alter that now, not when I could not even see to aim. But I did blast off a warning shot into the turbid sky as I rushed them, before swinging the butt of the gun round to smash the shorter man’s weapon from his hand. The shot startled them as much as I hoped. Had they been prepared for me I too might have been found dead on Mr Grey’s front step the following morning, but they were horrified by discovery and took to their heels, I in hot pursuit behind them.

 

From Mr Grey’s point of view of course, I was merely one of three indistinct figures who suddenly charged him out of the dark alley as the noise of a gunshot echoed around his head, and so it was that as the two assassins bolted past him onto the High Street I found myself grasped and  slammed against the wall of 33a, my revolver twisted swiftly from my hand.

 

“You!” gasped Mr Grey. “You were here yesterday – I know I recognise you; and you were following me in town, I saw you behind me.”

 

 “I’m not –“ I began, but Grey, too highly wrought to notice I was not fighting back, knocked me back against the wall a second time. “You shan’t have it as easy as you think,” he cried.

 

We were fairly matched in weight and height, and Grey had managed to  surprise me enough to seize my gun. Yet he was a civilian, and perhaps Holmes is right to say I merely act the part of one. I should have preferred not to do it, but I had soon wrestled my way out of his hold and had him far more securely pinned against the wall than he had managed to hold me.  “Stop,” I said in his ear. “Calm down.  I’m not one of them. I just saved your life.  I’m not trying to hurt you. My name’s John Watson, I work with Sherlock Holmes –”

 

Grey ceased struggling, and looked back at me over his shoulder in sheer bafflement. “Sherlock Holmes?” he echoed. “Isn’t he dead?”

 

I let him go and smiled at him, perhaps a little unsteadily.  “I thought so too until this April, but no, he is not. It would take a while to explain.”

 

Grey  stared at me and lurched about, trying to recover his breath. “Would you mind telling me why you’ve taken to following me, then?” he inquired, a note of faint, pardonable hysteria in his voice.

 

I’d never undertaken to tell any outright lies for a client who had been far from truthful with me, and even if I had, the game was surely up.  “Because a man who calls himself Álvaro de León asked me to watch over you, precisely against such an eventuality as this.  He said he was a friend of Friedrich von Havelberg --”

 

“Havelberg,” Grey spat, tense and angry again in a moment. “You don’t know what kind of man you’re mixed up with, if you’re dealing with him.”

 

“... and a friend of yours.”

 

“I have no friends in common with Havelberg.”

 

He’d begun shaking, I noticed. “Perhaps we could discuss this on the way to Baker Street?” I said gently. “Or I’ll come with you to a police station if you prefer. But you can’t stay here. Those men may try a second time.”

 

“I – “ Grey stared at me, as wary and tense as a hunted animal. “I don’t know you’re who you say you are.”

 

 I picked my gun carefully from the cobbles, ignored the way he stiffened, and held it out to him. “You can carry this for me, if you like,” I said.

 

Grey looked at the gun, and at my face,  managed a small, rather sheepish smile. “All right,” he said. He dropped the gun into his pocket and was for some minutes mute with lingering shock, allowing me to lead him to Evelyn Street and standing passively as I searched for a cab.    

 

“No, thank you,” he said, when I had him settled opposite me in a hansom and  I was offering him a drop of brandy from my flask. “I’m all right,  now. I only need to understand why you were there. The ... client who told you to spy on me?”

 

“Álvaro de León. I can’t tell you much about him, he has taken such pains to keep me in the dark. Yes, he said he was a friend of Havelberg’s. Might he once have been a client of _yours_? He said you were a barrister here in London years ago—that you were very generous to him, but that a murderer called Siegfried Wettin has been persecuting you ever since.”

 

“Siegfried Wettin’s just another of Havelberg’s _noms-de-guerre_ ,” said Grey blankly.“Like Otto von Schill and Alois Wertheim and all the others.” And then, before I could begin to take in the implications of this, his expression suddenly altered.  He lost colour, his eyes went very wide. “Wait, _Álvaro_ and _León_...?  did you say Álvaro?”I nodded, and Grey began to blink rapidly.“Does he . . . have green eyes? Walk with a cane?”  

 

I had already gone too far to answer with anything but the truth.

 

Mr Grey’s eyes filled  with tears. He dropped back against the seat so abruptly that I thought he might be fainting. He bowed his head, and  let out a laugh, which cracked with pain and desperation and a strange exhilaration. “I might have expected it,” he said to himself. “Well, _Mr Álvaro de León_ then.  My old friend. How remarkable to hear of him.”

 

“That’s not his real name,” I said. “I knew as much before this. Mr Grey, can you tell me who he is?”

 

There was a long silence.  “No,” he said. “Forgive me. You have every right to feel you’ve deserved the truth of me, but  he has a greater claim on me still, and he must  have his reasons.   Please...  please,  tell me where he is?”

 

“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s been rather elusive on that point.”

 

“But ... he knows where I am? Why doesn’t he come to me?”

 

“He was in Queen Street last night,” I said, and wished immediately  I had not. Grey looked stricken to the heart.

 

“ _Last night...?_ Why does he not trouble himself to knock on the door?”

 

“I can’t explain his actions very well, when he’s told me so little,” I said. “He said you and he were no longer on speaking terms. But he was still – he claimed to be most concerned for your safety.”

 

Nathan Grey covered his face. “My safety,” he said through his hands, and bit out another laugh that was half a sob. “The little _fool_.” Then he swiped fiercely at his eyes and rose from his seat.  “Stop the cab!” he called to the driver.

 

“Mr Grey!” I protested.

 

“I can’t come with you. I have to see Mr de León before anything else. I have to speak with him. I am not confident of _his_ safety, you see. You said he was in Deptford last night,” said Grey. “I shall watch for him there. If he doesn’t come—well, I have an idea or two.”

 

“For God’s sake, man, you were nearly murdered there not half an hour ago –”

 

“I shan’t easily be surprised a second time,” said Grey. His voice had steadied and strengthened. “And you’ll own no one would _expect_  a man to linger on the scene of his own attempted murder.” He straightened his shoulders. “Thank you for saving my life, Doctor. I apologise for repaying you so poorly.  If you see Mr de León before I do, tell him I regret very much that we are, as he puts it, _no longer on speaking terms._ Tell him I suspected all along, and have never stopped hoping.  Tell him I forgive him – no, tell him I _will_ forgive him, if he only comes back to me.”

 

With that he sprang out of the hansom, calling “Drive on!” to the cabbie so that in a moment I was rattling into the dark away from him.

 

I  very nearly went after him. I should have done so if I had not now been nearer home than Queen Street, and had I not felt it time to put everything before Holmes.   

 

 He had left my revolver, neatly placed on the seat. I should rather he had had it with him.

 

I hurried up the steps to our rooms. There was a light under the door and I flung it open, already calling, “Holmes --!”

 

But Holmes was not there. Sitting in his armchair was Álvaro de León.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still unbeta'd, do let me know if anything is obviously wrong!

            I closed the door. Álvaro de León sprang cheerfully to his feet. The light was soft enough that he seemed young again, a handsome, energetic boy with a life full of promise before him.   

 

“Ah, Dr Watson! Your landlady let me in when I told her I was a client. What a dear woman she is, and so fond of you both!”He was affecting the air of mild, dandyish stupidity he’d adopted when talking about Havelberg in the White Swan, but I didn’t believe I was even meant to be taken in by it – it was meant to distract, not to deceive.

 

“What do you want, Mr de León?” I asked.

 

“I was hoping to meet Mr Holmes, but he has not been in.”   

 

I wondered if it was not highly likely that he had taken pains to be here when Holmes was not. Because Holmes would not only have known what he was there for (and I thought I did) Holmes would have known what to do about it.

 

De León, meanwhile,  had wandered over to two masks that lay on the settee.

 

“Perhaps it has to do with these?”

 

One mask was unrelieved black, and covered only the upper part of the face, a long hooked nose projecting forward like a raven’s beak. The other represented a sun: painted bright gold with rippling sunbeams framing the serene brows.

 

“Is that one for you?” inquired de León, picking up the black mask. “It is a figure in the Venetian Carnival – the plague doctor.”

 

But I was quite certain Holmes had meant the  beaked, sinister mask for himself, and I glanced at the golden one with a strange pull of feeling.

 

“That’s none of your business,” I said. I rang the bell for Billy and crossed to my desk to write out a note.“I’d like you to leave.”

 

“What are you doing?” inquired de León.

 

 “Calling the police.”

 

“Oh, Doctor, is this really necessary?” cried de León. “Have I no claim as your client to greater hospitality than that?”

 

“I am not calling the police on your account,  though it is interesting you think I might be. It’s Nathan Grey who needs them.  Come in, Billy -- take this round to the police station, would you?”

 

Álvaro de León sobered in a moment. “What’s happened?” he asked, in quite a different voice. His accent warped oddly, flitted out of Europe altogether for an instant, and yet the change was too brief for me to be sure where it had landed.

 

“You were right to be worried about him. I may be running out of patience with you, Mr de León, but I am glad I accepted your commission – the two men you told me of meant to kill him tonight.”

 

“Oh, God,”  breathed de León, sinking onto the nearest chair, colour draining from his face.

 

He seemed so earnestly horrified I could not help but lower my guard a little. I came closer and hovered over him. “He’s all right,” I hastened to say. “He’s not hurt.”

 

 “I didn’t – I wanted to be sure he was safe,” stammered de León mechanically, his eyes glassy.  “But I did not really believe it would come to this. The devil –“  

 

“Who are you talking about now?” I said. “Siegfried Wettin? Or Freidrich of Havelberg?”

 

Álvaro de León sighed quietly. Youthfulness had deserted him and he looked gaunt and exhausted.  Little as I trusted him – and my suspicions of him were many -- I  could not help but be anxious at the prospect of flinging him out into the street. And I had less noble concerns about him too  -- he fascinated me still, there was something intolerable in the idea I might never know who he was, what lay at the heart of this vendetta of his that had made Holmes and myself its instruments.

 

“Grey knows who you really are,” I told him.

De Leon flinched, then took a long, deep breath, and made a visible effort to recover himself. He looked up into my face. “He didn’t tell you, though,” he said more levelly.

 

“He told me about Siegfried Wettin and Havelberg,” I said.  

 

De Leon made no apology for being caught in the lie, only gave me a shrug and a grim smile.

 

“Why did you tell him about me?” he asked, calmly. “I warned you not to.”

 

“I couldn’t lie to his face.”

 

“No...” mused de León.  “Of course you could not. That is in your stories in the Strand, is it not? Your transparency.  Sometimes your friend prefers to lie to you because if you knew the truth of his plans, you would not be capable to conceal them – they would be written all over your face...” He actually reached out touched my cheek and  such was the peculiar  magnetism of the man that it was a moment before I thought to  draw away from him.    “Are you really such an open book, Doctor?”he whispered.

 

I went and opened the door for him.“I thought you should know about your protégé, but I’ve told you now. And  I’ve already asked you to leave once.”

 

“I can’t get to him before the police do, and at least now a crime has been attempted on English soil they may be willing to do something for him,” said de León, implacably.   “I see how it is, I think. You’re not incapable of keeping secrets, when no one thinks to ask for them. But when an answer is demanded directly...” He came close again,  “Do you know where Havelberg is, Doctor?”

 

“No,” I said honestly. “Get out.”

 

“There is an invitation to Mrs Flyte’s masked ball on the mantelpiece, I’m afraid I happened to glance at it before you came in. Did I tell you I have read all your stories? I cannot imagine Mr Holmes wishing to go to a ball of any kind for pleasure, but there are the masks. So I think it _must_ be a professional matter, and I _can_ imagine Count Friedrich of Havelberg, in whom I think Mr Holmes must take a professional interest, finding such elegant society most convivial. Is Havelberg going to be at Mrs Flyte’s ball, Doctor?”

 

I grasped his arm and steered him bodily towards the door. de León did not struggle, only strained to keep his gaze on my face  and as I pushed him across the threshold I met his eyes despite myself. And I saw him read my expression as expertly as Holmes could. We both froze.  

 

“Thank you,” he breathed. His colour returned; his eyes glittered green. He lurched across the landing to lean across the opposite wall. ”Please don’t think too badly of me, or of yourself,” he whispered. “The deed was as good as done when Mrs Hudson let me in. I was already almost sure.”

 

All along it had been a case for Holmes after all, yet one Holmes could not have accepted if it had been offered to him openly: find Havelberg – so that de León could _resolve matters to his satisfaction._ It seemed far more likely to me now that that phrase meant exactly what Holmes had suspected it might, and we were to be made accessories to murder.

 

I grabbed for him. Eager as I had been to throw him out, it seemed to me my one hope now was to keep him there. He twisted fiercely, and  slammed an unerring fist into the site of the old bullet wound in my thigh. It was not a hard blow, but it did not need to be, my leg gave under me and as pain flashed through my body to spark against my eyes, de León slipped free and half-fell down the stairs. “Forgive me,” he gasped, plunging out of the door into Baker Street. I struggled after him, but it was a good minute before the muscles had begun to loosen enough for me to approach my normal speed. de León had once again vanished into the dark as if he  were part of it, and all I could do was limp back into our rooms to wait for Holmes.

 

*

 

“I’ve made such a hash of things,” I said miserably.

 

Holmes was in his armchair, his fingers steepled against his lips. He had not spoken in twenty minutes.

 

“I am a dunce for not seeing it earlier,” he remarked at last. “It is inevitable that Havelberg should have enemies; any of them might be as interested as I in his whereabouts. De León had tracked him as far as the Hôtel des Étrangers but no further. I can at least applaud his ingenuity in solving the problem.”

 

The police had  found neither Grey nor de León in Deptford.  I could only hope Grey had left the place voluntarily.

 

“The sheer nerve of using you,” I muttered.

 

Holmes drew in a  long measured breath. “He hurt you tonight,” he said quietly.  “I am not likely to forget that. And nor do I care for being tricked into doing a criminal’s work for him. Nevertheless, his description of Havelberg is apt enough; he _is_ a scavenger and a murderer. Grey’s adventure shows he has not turned over any new leaf. de León’s concern for him appears to be quite genuine. Little as I wish to absolve a criminal in advance, if one of Havelberg’s victims has chosen to do what the law has failed to...”

 

I remembered the exhaustion in de León's eyes, my own conviction that he had lived through something terrible. I shook my head.“But we cannot let him commit murder unchecked, however bad Havelberg is. And de León ... he can’t be an ordinary person. Not just an ordinary victim.”

 

“Indeed not. This cannot be the first time he has played a game of this kind; he has too much skill for that.  And even now – we see a detail of the design, not the whole. I still can’t make him out.”

 

“You have never seen him yet. Not properly.”

 

“We will see him tomorrow,” Holmes said. “All is squared with Mrs Flyte, Havelberg need only mention the Ruritanian attache to gain entrance. Mr de León has no such welcome prepared for him, of course, yet I  have little doubt he will find his way in. But what then? I don’t think he is the type to stab his target in full sight of hundreds of ball guests. And he knows, surely, that we will be there.”

 

“He means to trail Havelberg  as he leaves, perhaps,” I said.

 

“Perhaps,” said Holmes, and sank back into contemplation.

 

“Holmes,” I began after a  moment or two,  “I believe there’s something else about  de León and Grey. I think they’re – well –”

 

“Queers,” said Holmes.  

 

“I wasn’t going to put it quite like _that,”_ I said, startled.

 

“Oh? What would you have preferred?” His posture had not changed, but the lines of his body seemed suddenly charged with tension.

 

I had no definite answer. “Had you deduced it already?”

 

“It does not much surprise me. But to you, perhaps, it has come as a terrible shock? Especially as you found de León rather fascinating at first.”

 

I shifted awkwardly.  “I don’t know if I am _shocked,_ precisely, but ...”

 

“You see it more as a outré peculiarity, perhaps.  He will doubtless cut a quaint figure in your next story.”

 

“I could hardly write about _that._ ”

 

“No. Of course you could not.”

 

“Holmes – I don’t understand. Have I offended you?”

 

“How could I be offended by an inference, however sordid, about persons so entirely unconnected with us?” demanded Holmes, and, seizing his violin, set it caterwauling horribly for the next hour. He doubtless meant to drive me out of the room, and it was only bewildered stubbornness that kept me in it until Holmes at last stalked into his room, violin and all.

 

*

 

The caterwauling had turned to arias from popular operas by the next morning; the melody of  The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves lured me down to the sitting room where I found  to my dismay Holmes had evidently had not been to bed. He was still in his  shirtsleeves, lounging on the sofa in what looked a most unsuitable posture for violin-playing, with Álvaro de León’s letters to me on the floor beside him.

 

“My dear fellow, is it worth this?”  I asked, after a moment in which I could not bear to interrupt the music. “We will surely know more one way or the other tonight, without you wearing yourself out first.”

 

Holmes blinked up at me,   and for a moment I had the disconcerting impression that perhaps he was asleep after all; I had never heard of anyone playing the violin in his sleep before but if musical somnambulism existed I should not have been surprised if Holmes’ other habits left him decidedly vulnerable to the disorder.

 

“I heard it in Rome two years ago,” he murmured.  “I was very foolish to risk anything as frivolous as the opera.  I had to pay for the folly the next day. _Oh mia Patria sì bella e perduta! O membranza sì cara e fatal_!” His expression had cleared; there was none of the unaccountable hostility of the night before in his eyes.

 

Something tightened my throat. I do not speak Italian, but I remember enough Latin to grasp more or less what the words meant, and I know, at least, what The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves is about. He so rarely volunteers anything about those years of exile.

 

“Shouldn’t you go to bed for a while, at least?” I resumed softly. “You should be rested for whatever happens tonight.”

 

He shook his head distractedly. “Something in the violin wants my help getting out, dear boy, I’ll know why when I hear it.”

 

“I wish you’d eat something, at least,” I said, but he shook his head again and returned to _Nabucco._

 

I poured myself tea, and then heard myself asking:“Holmes, were you always confident you would come home?”

 

For a moment I was astonished at myself, as if I were still the war-shaken young man who could not even work up the nerve to ask his fellow lodger his profession. And then I wondered why I should not ask, why I had not asked before.

 

Holmes lowered the violin and for the second time that week I found myself the object of keen, silvery scrutiny,  but this time, whether it was the effect of the music or the sleeplessness, the expression behind the gaze  was so strangely open I felt  my breath catch for an instant in my chest.

 

  “No,” he said quietly.  “I was determined not to die too easily, of course.  I was fairly hopeful of making myself a nuisance where Moran was concerned eventually, and I never thought it would take so long one way or the other.  But beyond that... no, I would not have taken a bet on myself.”

 

I had not thought I was asking him whether he had expected to survive. I felt the habitual terror of waking up from a dream of his return, turned inside out, into something bright and luminous and terribly fragile.

 

“You look as though you want to apologise for something; I have no notion why. I too readily forget: everything  since I signed my name on that note has been – what should I say? An extra.  A gift.” He twirled the bow languidly, encompassing the room, himself, me. “Beyond what I could have expected or measured or deserved, and  I really have no right to ask anything more again, have I?”

 

I felt that the music and my question had drifted him away somewhere lonely and I wished he had been closer, so that I could have touched his shoulder or laid my hand over his, without disturbing a balance between us that seemed somehow delicate just then. But he was on the other side of the room with the violin in his arms.

 

Instead, I said rather thickly: “If I’d known, I’d have bet on you,”

 

“Well.”Holmes’ smile regained a trace of humour.  “There is a reason we lock away your chequebook, isn’t there?”

 

With my duties as Grey’s bodyguard indefinitely suspended, I had expected to have relatively little to do that day beyond briefly discussing some outstanding matters  from the sale of my practice at my bank. However a clerk chanced to topple over at his desk into what proved the first of a series of seizures, and by the time I had successfully administered potassium bromide, had seen him safe home and entrusted his sister with a list of specialists,  I had barely enough time to return home and dress for the ball.

 

I heard the first notes of the violin from above before I had opened our front door. I found Holmes still on the sofa – he had found time to change into evening dress, and his mask propped on his forehead like a dark visor, but he was still frowning into space while his bow swept over the strings and his fingers  as if of their own will. Still Verdi, I was almost certain.

 

“Is that _La Forza del Destino?_ ” I asked.

 

“Yes,” Holmes replied absently. I hung up my coat and went to pick up the mask that now lay on my writing-desk. The violin’s voice soared achingly upwards, was tossed back and forth on violent waves -- and then,  mid-phrase, it broke off.

 

 “Yes,” Holmes repeated, springing up. “Of course it is _La Forza del Destino._ ” He clapped one hand to his mouth, so that for a moment only his eyes were uncovered below the mask, and they were wild with a peculiar mixture of delight and sadness.  “Oh,” he said. “You were right from the beginning. The handwriting. You were right about everything.”

 

Abruptly he folded back onto the sofa, put his head into his hands, and let out a bleak laugh.

 

“Holmes, for heaven’s sake. What is it?”

 

Holmes shook his head, and did not lift it. His face was as effectively hidden by the beak of the mask as if he had pulled it down into its proper place.

 

“Forgive me. If I am right now, it will be hard enough to bear how utterly obtuse I have been thus far; if I am _wrong,_ it is too humiliating a thing to face before an audience.”

 

*

Holmes sat in silence all through the drive to St James’ Square. It disconcerted me far more than I would  have expected that I could not see his face, save for the occasional glimpse of the strong jaw and the firm, tightly compressed mouth. I had seen him far more effectively disguised before. What should I need to discern so badly? And was he not capable of making his own face as opaque as any mask, if he chose?

 

Outside the doors of the Willis Rooms, the guests were arriving. I saw that many had gone further than simply donning a mask: there were wigs of heaped curls in impossible golds and purples, hats with nodding feathers, hooded cloaks. I did not see the constables that the Yard had agreed to station around and within the hall itself, but I knew they were there. hidden by a flock of  Pierrots, Greek tragedians, sultanas,  devils. Holmes stalked out among them, a thin, dark spectre among the harlequins and angels. I put on my own mask as I followed him. I heard the first lilt of a waltz from within.

 

I wondered where Álvaro de León was. I pictured him in a fox mask, with sharp ears rising above his russet hair. 

 

We handed over our invitations at the top of the stairs and Mrs Flyte came bustling to greet us. She was not in any particular costume, just a very expensive and beautiful white ballgown, her  mask a gilt concoction that supported a froth of snowy feathers above her brow but hid very little of her lovely face.

 

“I _know_ I mustn’t say anything about who you are,” she said happily. “Though I am simply _bursting_ to. But it is _too_ exciting that you’re here, _Signori Incogniti_!”

 

I suspected I did know what expression lurked under Holmes’ mask at that, so I  thanked her for our invitations as heartily as possible and asked her to dance.  A brisk _Schottische_ had just begun to play.

 

The hard rims around the eyes of the mask cut away my peripheral vision; the world became edged with gold, heady and faintly menacing. It was difficult to retain a clear sense of the dimensions of the room; it seemed at once to close in around us as the dance batted us to and fro, scarcely avoiding collisions, and to spread out into an infinite fog of colour, in which glimpses of eyes and lips  bobbed and flashed like lights reflected on dark water Mrs Flyte’s feathers obscured what I could see straight ahead of me. I glimpsed Holmes on the edge of the dancefloor, outside the dance, and fancied I could feel his sombre gaze enveloping us all, like a solvent in which we were suspended.

 

“I think it’s going rather well, don’t you?” asked Mrs Flyte, passing happily under my arm. 

 

We turned, and standing at the entrance to the card room I saw a man taller even than Holmes, a visor of silver and gold on his face, with sharp edges  framing the jaw like part of a Tudor helm, while a crest jutted above the forehead like a crown. The hair that showed at the edge of the mask beside his ear was very fair.

 

The dance swivelled us about so that I could no longer see him, and I dared not look about too openly  for Holmes. But he must have seen the man too – when do I ever see anything he has not?  

 

“Is it a murder?” whispered Mrs Flyte to me. “That you’re trying to solve, I mean.”

 

“I very much hope not, Mrs Flyte.”

 

“Oh, so it _might_ be? Dear, what a ghoul you must think me.”

 

I had been, rather, but then wondered if it was entirely reasonable to acquit my fascination with Holmes’ work of the same morbidity, so smiled at her.

 

It seemed a long time before the pattern of the dance gave me a second view The man in the crested mask. He was neither dancing nor watching the dancers. He was watching the other onlookers.

 

The _Schottische_ came to an end. We applauded and I escorted Mrs Flyte off the dance floor. 

 

Holmes materialised at my side. “Yes, that is Havelberg,” he said quietly to me at once.

 

“Poor fellow, presumably he is looking for the military attaché to the Ruritanian embassy,” I said.

 

“I shall be interested to see what company he chooses in that gentleman’s stead.”

 

“You are going to have to dance too, if you don’t want to be conspicuous,” I told him.

 

I had not the smallest expectation he would actually do so; I had never seen him dance and assumed it rated highly among the things he despised. To my amazement he said, “You are right,” allowed Mrs Flyte to introduce him to a lady in silver with a fleur-de-lys mask, and walked with her into the next dance.

 

It was a mazurka, slower and more circular in its pathways, rather better suited for covert surveillance, except that the floor was more crowded than it had been during the _schottische_ ; brushing sleeves and shoulders with other couples was inescapable, and one had to keep one’s wits about one to avoid outright collision.

 

 Without Mrs Flyte’s headdress nodding in front of me, I could see rather better. I could not help watching Holmes when I was supposed to be watching Havelberg. How was it, I wondered,  that while perfectly in time with the music, he seemed to move faster than everyone else? How could he, at one and the same time, float weightlessly through the crowd like a drift of smoke and cut through it like a blade? I remembered him flying ahead of me into the dark towards the sound of screams on that moor, I saw him twisting away from a knife under the Thames Embankment. Did no one else notice the grace, or the sharp edges of him shining  through the music’s smoothness?

 

“They make me feel so strange, these masks,” whispered my partner nervously. I thought she seemed painfully young but she was one of the relatively few guests whose masks concealed her whole face. “Nothing feels quite real.”  

 

I reminded myself of why we were there  and watched Havelberg approach a plump, clever-looking little man with a plain red mask pushed up onto his forehead. When I looked for Holmes again I found I’d lost track of him, until his voice spoke just inches from my ear.

 

“He is talking to Baron Obenstein, one of the master secret agents of Europe,” Holmes whispered to me.

 

I felt the length of a tall, narrow body at my back. For a moment the music rocked us together. I turned my head, but even then the shape of the ridiculous mask hid him from me.

 

“He has nothing Obenstein wants,” Holmes concluded.

 

The mazurka parted us again. I saw the plump man leaving Havelberg behind with a faintly pitying look.

 

And then Álvaro de León spun past me, a slender Queen of the Night in his arms, all indigo and silver stars. The limp was undetectable. His naked face was radiant.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I am not as brave as Richie, I didn't think they could get away with openly dancing with each other.)


	7. Chapter 7

 

The music ended and I struggled my way to Holmes’ side as rapidly as I decently could.  I was absurdly afraid Álvaro de León would disappear into air again before Holmes could see him.

 

“There he is,” I said. “That’s him. He isn’t wearing a mask.”

 

Holmes gazed at Álvaro de León. I thought the smile under the black beak seemed wistful, but I could not see whether it reached his eyes. “Yes, he is,” he said.

 

We waited out the next dance, and de León gravitated gently towards Havelberg without the least appearance of deliberate purpose unless you knew to watch for it. At last he walked past him as if heading for the cards room, then turned back with an expression of pleased surprise, as if encountering an old acquaintance. He shook his hand  blithely while Havelberg peered down at him, bemused.  

 

“Admirably done,” Holmes murmured beside me, as if to himself.

 

De Leon and Havelberg strolled together through the archway to the cards room as the latest dance came to an end and the music quieted  long enough for us to hear a commotion from outside the hall – a scuffle, raised voices. A pair of sturdy footmen hurried towards the lobby. “Univited guests,” muttered Holmes to me, sounding quite unsurprised, as we followed de León and Havelberg.  

           

             

De Leon was already pushing a large drink across a card table to  Havelberg as we entered the room. A fug of cigar smoke thickened the air, but the dancing had not yet produced such a large population of exhausted refugee that we had difficulty finding seats nearby.  “Oh, Irving,” said Holmes querulously as we sat down, “let’s not gamble this time, you know how my wife feels about it.”

 

I smiled behind the mask, amused at the idea of playing a rake leading Holmes astray, and  pleasantly conscious that for once there was no need to worry about my expression betraying us. “Just a guinea on it, barely counts as gambling.”

 

We began to play.

 

 Havelberg had pushed his mask up onto his forehead, revealing clear-cut patrician features turning a little fleshy and blue eyes  a little red, a vertical scar on the left cheek flushed with the heat of the ballroom.

 

“I apologise,” he was saying to de León. “Your face is familiar, yet the name...”

 

De Leon shrugged genially. “Well, I was using a different one when last we met, and so were you. So the game goes, and it’s been a long time since Geneva. What do you say now? Time to retire and pick up a little heiress? If so, you’ve come to the right place.”

 

Havelberg smiled a little tightly and “Not yet, I think.”

 

“No? Not even that nice brunette in pink out there?” He gestured towards the arch, and as  Havelberg looked back towards the ballroom, de León deftly poured half his own drink into a vase.  The glass was back at his lips when Havelberg looked back. “Prettier with a mask on, in truth, but her father owns most of Derbyshire,” de León continued easily.

 

Havelberg snorted.“I have no ambitions in Derbyshire.”

 

De Leon sipped the remains of his drink. “Oh, come. You’re not still pining for the old castle, are you?”   

 

“I want what is mine,” snapped Havelberg, loudly and bitterly enough to penetrate the soft smog of the waltz, so that a pair of young men looked up from the billiards table in surprise.  He lowered his voice. “And if I cannot have that...”

 

“Then you want enough to rub in the faces of your enemies?” surmised de León genially. “What everyone wants. Always an expensive project. Still, plenty of gold in the Transvaal.”

 

There was a taut pause.

 

“Are you doing business in the Transvaal?”asked Havelberg.

 

De Leon smiled and grimaced at once, as if he’d been foolishly forthcoming.  “Let us play a round of cards and drink and  not – what do they say in England – talk shop, for a moment.”

 

They played through a  round of faro. de León chattered gaily of people they had both known years before, how this one had married a Polish princess, and that one had got himself killed in the Sudan, poor fellow, and still another had entered a monastery in Prague. I was impatient enough for him to return to the subject, for Havelberg the delay must have been almost unbearable. All the while de León dealt out the cards, contrived to lose three games out of four, and poured more alcohol into Havelberg while most of his own drinks went into the vase.

 

“Could you remind me at least of where you come from?”asked Havelberg, not quite succeeding in sounding casual.  

 

“A dismal little country in the Carpathians. It has not existed since I was twelve, I have never been sentimental about nationality since. But I think you mean, where do my _loyalties_ lie, and that is quite another question. I like to be a good guest, Herr Wertheim – that is a more modern virtue than patriotism, don’t you think?”

 

“Britain, for the present, then?”

 

“ _A_ Briton, rather than Britain, perhaps. Have you encountered Cecil Rhodes? A great man.”

 

 “A man itching for a second Boer War, if I am not misinformed.”

 

“You are not. And he will have it, I promise you. I have heard him say he would annexe the planets if he could.”

 

“When did Britannia ever see a land full of gold without feeling an irresistible urge to civilise it,” laughed Havelberg, shuffling and reshuffling his hand.

 

“And long may she prosper,” said de León, with a little flourish of his glass. “It is excellent for business.”

 

“Are there openings in this business?” asked Havelberg, flushing a little at having to ask so openly.

 

De Leon studied Havelberg thoughtfully for a moment. “There are possibilities,” he said. He cast a glance around the room; he looked, I was certain, straight into my eyes. He laid down his cards. “Perhaps we might talk somewhere more private?”

 

They left the game unfinished. We continued to play until they were out of the room, then followed them. Holmes dragged off his mask and tossed it to the ground as we reached the main doors, I left mine hanging on a railing by the square.

 

We kept a careful distance behind them, let them fade to a pair of shadows in the fog ahead of us.   Havelberg stumbled a little on the damp cobbles, de León’s steps were as sure and light as ever. To my relief, they did not go far, only round the corner of the square and down King Street to a little tavern called the Golden Lion. Peering through the doorway, we saw them heading into a small  back room where a fire blazed.

 

Holmes gestured to me, and instead of entering after them we retreated outside. Holmes led me down a narrow alley that flanked the building, and swung himself over a gate into a tiny courtyard behind the tavern. I followed with a little more difficulty, for my leg was beginning to protest the week’s work, but I would have tolerated far worse to see it through. Holmes squeezed my shoulder as I landed beside him and we crept towards the back wall of the tavern.

 

There was a window to the room where de León and Havelberg sat, and though shutters were loosely drawn across it, it was open.

 

De Leon was speaking, “At present, the trouble is that the Colonial Secretary supports Rhodes more in the abstract than in practicality. He wants the Transvaal, but he sits here in Westminster wringing his hands rather than let us act.”

 

 “Suppose President Kruger were persuaded he had German support for an attack on Rhodesia, would that not get the things moving on the British side?”

 

“You think you could do it?” asked de León.

 

“If you like, assuming it is useful to leave him in place at all. But perhaps seeing him out of the way altogether would be better?”

 

“It is true that a German aristocrat with, shall we say, certain skills and no excessive devotion to Germany would be a most useful colleague at present.”

 

“Bugger Germany,” said Havelberg at once.

 

De Leon laughed. “Yes,  it is no surprise you are no friend of the poor Kaiser!  But you see, that is the problem.”

 

“ _Wha_ t is the problem?”

 

“That it  isn’t surprising. You _are_ rather transparent these days, my dear fellow. I don’t say this to offend you, but I fear you’re no longer quite on peak form. There’s no shame in that, this game eats most of us alive, we all know that.  Did I mention poor Roland ended up in a monastery? Yes? Well.  If this were ten years ago... but you see, that business in Warsaw. You must own, the last time you were involved in a coup, it did not go so well for you.”

 

“Nor for the people who stood in my way,” said Havelberg. “Go and look for them now.”

 

There was such ice in his voice that even de León’s cheerful poise seemed shaken. “I would find a king still on his throne,” he said after a moment.

 

“A _King_ ,” snarled Havelberg. “A puppet, a lackey of the Kaiser. When what is mine is restored to me, we will see how much longer he reigns. But in the meantime,  -- his Lord Chancellor? His spying whore?”

 

 “Colonel Kratzer…?” de León still sounded taken aback, but intrigued too.

 

“It was foolish of him to go to Bucharest.”

 

 “But I remember reading of his death – there was no question of foul play.”

 

Havelberg uttered a little grunt of laughter. “Indeed not,” he said. “Do you take me for an amateur?”

 

I looked at Holmes. In the course of the evening, watching Havelberg crestfallen in Obenstein’s wake, desperately angling for de León’s interest and approval, I had almost begun to disassociate the faded drunkard from the thugs who had nearly murdered Grey the night before; I’d half-forgotten what the man was. My skin crept now at his proximity and Holmes lifted a hand to warn me to remain still.

 

De Leon seemed grudgingly impressed.

 

“Well,” he said, “he was not young, but he lived by the sword, I suppose. And… oh, the courtesan, too? Good Lord. I had quite forgotten she was dead. I thought it was some accident.”

 

I heard a rustle of paper changing hands:

 

“I do not often carry souvenirs, but in her case… an indulgence.”

 

“ _E’ morta la celebre cantante in fuoco tragico a Firenze…”_ read de León, from, I surmised, an Italian news cutting.

 

“She did not make it easy for me, I will give her that,” said Havelberg. “I chased her for years. For a while I let her think I had forgotten her. I even might have done, perhaps, but then she married and I…  _ach,_ I could not let it be after that.”

 

“Why did it matter if she married?” inquired de León, sounding fascinated.

 

“That she thought she could take everything from me, live like a princess and then … pfft, walk away,   marry a civilian!  Women like her die of drink or morphine or French pox, that is the price she should have expected to pay –  for her to bounce around Europe, supposing she was _different.._.!”

 

“It was an offence to you,” said de León softly, and if there was a faint edge in his voice Havelberg certainly did not notice, “that she could be happy.”

 

“Of course! She ruined my life, what right had she to think she could live so smug and pleased with herself after that?”

 

“The husband died in the fire too, I suppose? For you must have been afraid of reprisals.”

 

“Afraid of him?” scoffed Havelberg, indignant.  “No. He is merely a nuisance.”

 

“Then he is still alive?”

 

“For tonight, yes. I was prepared to let him go. But lately he has bothered me once too often.”

 

“What, he’s here in London?”

 

“Yes, he is an Englishman, he came creeping home after I killed his wife.  My men bungled it yesterday, I should have done the thing myself.”

 

“Perhaps so,” said de León quietly, with a faint sigh. “But I take your point. You are not a man to be trifled with. You are a compelling candidate.” And for a moment there was no sound from within except the crackling of the fire. Then de León began to speak again, his voice louder and harder than it had been before.

 

“Except, you see,  the wife did not die in the fire in Florence.  The body they found in the ashes was a friend of hers –she had been a dancer until her health failed her. She was English too, though she danced under a Russian name, and had lived abroad a long time. She was sick and she had no family; there were few people who would miss her. But the… ‘courtesan’ we have been speaking of, she was fond of her. Have you understood yet why it is that you recognise my face?”

 

There was a silence, and then a hoarse gasp from Havelberg: “ _Du!”_ and then he was roaring, _“Du schlampe! Verdammte hure...!”_

 

We heard the crash of a table overturned. Holmes slammed the shutters open and we scrambled through into the room. Havelberg’s hands were closed about de León’s throat. It took both of us to wrench him away, and he was impossible to contain until I brought the butt of my revolver down on his head.

 

“Gentlemen,” gasped de León, “I believe I could have managed. But thank you.” He was, I saw, clutching a slender blade. “You heard all of that, I trust? The confession of the murder and attempted murder of two British citizens, among others? Perhaps those excellent constables I saw earlier at Mrs Flyte’s might take an interest? There is also a gramophone recording behind the armchair but those wax cylinders can be _so_ unpredictable. And I believe I should like a drink.”

 

Despite his insouciance he was very pale.  He staggered over to the armchair and dropped into it, put  his face into his hands, and did not look up as the room filled first with the tavern’s staff and later with policemen, who took the groaning Havelberg away.

 

“If we could have a moment,” Holmes commanded the officers, placing himself implacably in their way when they attempted to approach de León.   

 

Sometime during the commotion he had acquired a glass of brandy. When the constables had withdrawn, Holmes crossed to de León’s chair and put it gently into his hand, then righted the table that had been knocked over, and perched on its edge before him.

 

“ _La Forza del Destino,_ ” he said. _“_ Two lovers separated and persecuted, both forced to live in disguise, she taking the part of a man…  Álvaro and Leonora. Rather a dangerous choice of pseudonym for a fugitive with your history. The initials, too…” 

 

“I know. It was a joke, an indulgence. But what else had I to live on?”

 

“I understand precisely,” Holmes said softly. “But there is no good part for a contralto in _La Forza del Destino.”_

“I can sing tenor,” murmured Álvaro de León. “My party trick.”

 

The accent had not quite steadied, it still contained notes from all over Europe, but America had at last risen to the top of the voice.

 

Holmes smiled, and for a moment all the sadness and complexity in his expression vanished. 

 

“Why did you not simply tell us what you really wanted, Mrs Norton?”

 

Álvaro de León lifted his head. He peeled away the moustache as he did so, plucked off the little goatee.  

 

“You should know something about pretending to be dead, Mr Holmes,” replied the late Irene Adler.


	8. Chapter 8

 

“I _was_ prepared to kill him”, she said, spinning the knife idly between her fingers and then folding it into her pocket. The pitch of her voice was only a little higher than Álvaro de León’s had been, but the resonance and timbre were still changing; the syllables growing somehow more fluid the longer she spoke. The set of her shoulders loosened and softened, the gestures of her hands grew more frequent and expressive.  But sitting there in the armchair in her frock coat and trousers, one leg casually slung over the arm of the chair, and puffing on a  clay pipe, she was for the present neither quite man nor woman.  She was something between.

 

 “You might have stopped me killing him, or you might have failed to stop me and been implicated in his murder. I had to be sure you were not too close,   Mr Holmes. I know you would have helped me, without all of this, and I hope you can forgive me the deception; but you’d have done your best to take the problem far away from  me and solve it on your own. It would have been noble of you, but _I could not let you do it_. If you’d gotten nearer him, if  he’d ever suspected you were helping me, I’m certain he would have killed you. And I have watched him kill and maim too many people on my account already.  I’ve carried this for years now. It is mine, it has been all that belonged to me. _I_ had to see it through to the end.”

 

Holmes said nothing. His face was motionless as stone, but his eyes were unusually soft in the glow of the firelight. 

 

Irene Adler – for so I will still call her – looked at me. “I’m very sorry for hurting you yesterday, Doctor,“ she said. “Especially after all you had done. Of course you’ll know by now who Mr Grey is, and why his safety meant so much to me. And I’m sure you realise it wasn’t just a trick – I _did_ think it was the handiest way to catch Mr Holmes’ interest while keeping my distance, but I was anxious for Godfrey too, and I couldn’t think of anyone better to watch over him than you. But I didn’t really believe anything would happen; Havelberg had let Godfrey alone for so long, and I don’t know why that changed. I didn’t mean to put you in such danger.”

 

“Forgiven, Mrs Norton,” I said.

 

“Forgiven with one condition,” amended Holmes, his voice low and smooth as the Thames at midnight.  “How did it come to this?”  

 

She drew deeply on her pipe and gazed dreamily at a smoke ring as it drifted towards the ceiling. “I suppose you know I met Wilhelm – the King -- in Warsaw. I was singing Orfeo.” She smiled to herself. “Dressed as a man, even then. And Wilhelm came backstage to meet me. It was nothing very serious at first. Of course I liked to have a handsome prince sending roses to my dressing room night after night. I liked the parties. But we weren’t in love. Not then.

 

“One night he took me to a gala and I met Colonel Kratzer. I didn’t think he’d like me; he seemed such a stuffy old thing, all medals and beard –  but then some duke or count, I forget who now, said ‘opera singer... what a quaint euphemism’ and Kratzer... Kratzer said ‘I won’t have you insult a lady and an artist in my presence’ and had him turned out of the room! So we got to talking. He doted on Wilhelm. And he suspected there was a plot to keep him off the throne. And so . . .”

 

“He recruited you as a spy,” said Holmes.

 

“No one makes a better spy than a pretty woman, Mr Holmes. I went to many more parties, I met a great number of aristocrats and politicians, and whenever flattery failed, which was seldom, all I had to do was pretend to drink  a lot of champagne and behave very stupidly and then lie on a chaise longue with my eyes shut  and listen to them talk. None of them even realised how many languages I can understand.“

 

“You must have been in such danger!” I said, shuddering at the scene she had conjured.

 

Irene Adler shrugged, “What, lying around defenceless in front of all those wicked men?” She grinned. “If any of them touched me I used to be sick on their shoes.”

 

Holmes let out a short bark of appreciative laughter.

 

“Besides, I was young. Danger didn’t seem real. I made some of them think I might go to bed with them eventually, of course. Havelberg was one of them, that’s part of why he hates me so much, I think. Not just that I wrecked his plans but I... got his hopes up first. Anyway, I heard what I needed. He was planning to kill Wilhelm. It would have looked like an accident. Wilhelm had a cousin who was paying him to do it. Not just in money, you understand, but lands, titles too.”

 

“Louis of Moravia,” said Holmes, and I remembered Havelberg’s entry in his indices, the friend whose death had driven him into exile.

 

 “Yes. He would have taken the throne of Bohemia. When they went to arrest him. He tried to climb out of a window to escape and fell. I think later word got around that Havelberg had killed him. Almost funny, isn’t it, that the one murder that’s ever caused him  any real trouble is the one he didn’t commit?”

 

“And then Wilhelm of Bohemia was no longer just a handsome prince, but the prince whose life you had saved,” Holmes said.

 

Her mouth twisted sadly. “Not as good a way to begin a romance as it seemed. I suppose we were as much in love with the drama of it all as each other.” She looked down at her hands. “Colonel Kratzer was always kind to me. Even when Wilhelm… wasn’t.”

 

I was indignant to think of it: “You saved the king’s life, and he still…”

 

“Threw me over for that tedious German princess, yes. Or unfortunate German princess, perhaps. Well, I am glad he did, or I would never have met Godfrey.” Her smile faded suddenly.  “Though perhaps I have no right to be thankful for that.

 

“We’d been married six months when I realised we were being watched. I thought it was Wilhelm, still trying to get that picture back.  So we moved on to Nîmes and  I wrote to him asking if he thought I was stupid and informing him that I  had several copies of the photograph made and hidden in secure places in separate cities, but that I’d publish it if he didn’t leave us alone. It was almost two months before I had Wilhelm’s reply. In the meantime we came home one night and found the door to our house had been smashed in. I still thought it was Wilhelm. I didn’t think I could feel angrier.” She smiled mirthlessly. “I’ve had an education since then.”

 

“I’m not even sure Havelberg was truly trying to kill me then. Surely he’d have managed it, if he had been? I think he wanted to make me as miserable as he could beforehand.  And then Wilhelm’s letter came, quite baffled, saying of course he was no longer anxious about the photograph, not since doing business with you, Mr Holmes -- he trusted my word and wished me well. Then I read that Colonel Kratzer was dead in Bucharest and finally I thought of Havelberg.

 

“We moved again. And again. And I thought we had slipped him, or perhaps that he had only meant to frighten me in the first place. And then – I told you at the beginning, in that letter – about the carriage he overturned.  Of course, I didn’t mention I was in the carriage too. It was on the edge of a ravine, on the Via Francigena. I was lucky.” She glanced ruefully down at her thigh.  “It might have healed better, but I had to hobble a mile through the fields to find help.  But Godfrey... you’ve seen the scar. His _skull_ was cracked, Mr Holmes, no one expected him to live, or to be the same man again if he did. Whatever it cost, whatever I had to do, it had to be the last time Havelberg came near him.

 

“I changed my name again, and my way of dressing; I went to the police. I wrote to Wilhelm again, begging for help this time, which was unspeakably humiliating and did us no good, in the end. We were running out of money, on top of everything; I’d left Godfrey in a sanitarium, which wasn’t cheap and neither of us had worked for a while, and how could I go on stage now, without drawing Havelberg straight to me? So, there I was, sitting outside the Uffizi trying to think straight, and the sky was blue  and everything was so offensively beautiful I felt like screaming, and a woman was crying.   And I just meant to give her a dirty look. It wasn’t reasonable but I didn’t feel kind. But when I did look . . . We’d been friends in Milan when I sang at La Scala. I should have got up and walked away before she could notice me.

 

“But I said “Vera?” and I cost her her life.”

 

“You cannot be responsible for another person’s crimes,” I told her.

 

Irene Adler sighed.  “She couldn’t pay the rent. She had no savings and she was too sick to dance. She had nowhere to go.  I  warned  her I wasn’t a safe person to be near, but she was too desperate to care and I ... I _couldn’t_ turn her away. I couldn’t pay for her to live somewhere else, either. She tried to help me in return, poor thing, writing letters for me to friends and trying to help me think of ways to make money. But I slept less and less, and one night,   I put on my walking clothes – I mean, I dressed as a man – and went out. I wandered about the Duomo. Eavesdropping on people in the dark and envying them all horribly because they weren’t us. I couldn’t stand to be still. I only went home when my leg hurt too much to keep going. So I turned back to our street, and before I reached it I had the strangest feeling, I believe it was before I smelled smoke. It was certainly before I saw the flames.

 

“And then I stood there, watching the building burn, and  thought of everything that would happen if I tapped one of the _pompieri_ on the shoulder and told him that despite appearances, I was the woman who lived in those rooms.”

 

“That was four years ago.”

 

Silence flooded the room. Irene Adler sank even deeper into the chair, closing her eyes, the exhaustion that had hovered at Álvaro de León’s edges suddenly stark on her face.

 

“We both grieved to hear you were dead,” I told her. “I am very glad you are not. I am so sorry for everything you’ve suffered.”

 

Her face contorted. “For God’s sake, I told you before, don’t be too kind to me, I can’t. . .” Tears trickled from under the closed lids. “And I didn’t kill him. I am not a particularly good person. I would have liked to kill him, very much. But I didn’t.  Because I knew Godfrey would not. I told myself I would try it his way first. And then at least I would be able to look him in the face when I saw him, even if he didn’t forgive me.”

 

“Last night,” I said, “you didn’t give me a chance to tell you: he said he would forgive you, if you’d only come back to him.”

 

Irene Adler turned to me, her eyes wide, her lips a little parted. For a moment it was hard to believe I had ever believed her a man.

 

“I rather suspect,” said Holmes  mildly, “that it was he who was ejected from the ball earlier this evening.”

 

She put her face back into her hands for a moment. “He’s here?” She sprang to her feet, alive again with feverish energy.“I must find him.”

 

The fog had turned to rain at last, the cobbles glittering hectically, streamers of water flapping from eaves and the bare trees in the square. Across the road, outside the Willis  Rooms, a man was arguing with a pair of constables.  And despite the dark, and her disguise, he recognised her first.

 

His shout rang from the wet walls. “ _Irene_!”

 

Irene Adler  stood transfixed, the rain plastering her curls to her head, beginning to shake. She stammered, “I – I’m sorry, I don’t expect – I can’t --“

 

I don’t think she could hear herself.  But Nathan Grey – Godfrey Norton – was already pelting through the rain towards her, and at the last she broke into a lurching run to meet him.

 

The embrace brought them both to their knees. They kissed, she still in her frock coat and trousers, there in the middle of the street.

 

*

It would be impossible, I think, for any widower who had loved his wife to witness such a scene without a selfish pang, but that was more than outweighed by the wonder of it. “Well, Álvaro de León was something more than an ordinary con man,” I said with a laugh, as at last we approached our front door.

 

“Pray let us drop the subject,” said Holmes, with a dead weariness in his tone that quite chilled me. I had hoped for time – much, much more time, before I heard that bleakness from him again. “I am delighted for them both, but it has been a humiliating episode.”

 

“Why? You worked it out wonderfully, as always. Clearly you had understood somewhere at the back of your mind before, and it took the violin to bring it out --”

 

“It is galling to have been played for a fool,” snapped Holmes, stalking ahead of me up the steps, “no matter how good the cause. And  I was absurdly slow to recognise her.”   

 

“I really don’t see how you could have done it faster. You only glimpsed her once before tonight, in the fog.”

 

“Watson, you provided me with an exact description of her, down to the details of her singular eyes, and I merely scoffed at you for it. I look daily at her photograph on our mantelpiece.  You provided me with the simplest, most logical explanation for the handwriting – that I had seen the writer’s natural hand before.  I knew she was more than capable of disguising herself as a man –”

 

“She was _dead --_!” I protested.

 

“--  I had an excellent view of Godfrey Norton in Deptford and all I could manage was a vague sense that there was _something_ I ought to be thinking of –“

 

“You last saw him six years ago, bearded, under another name --!  For heaven’s sake, Holmes.” For though I know the depressive attacks occur whenever they will, it did seem most unreasonable of him to reduce the Nortons’ story to merely an unfavourable measure of his own powers. “And what does it matter?”

 

“ _You_ deduced the truth of it in advance of me,” retorted Holmes.  

 

I stopped in my tracks, halfway up the stairs. “I beg your pardon?”

He  glared down at me from the landing. “Oh, perhaps not quite consciously. But you knew she was a woman, at least.”

 

I gaped at him. Irene Adler and Álvaro de León flickered together before my mind’s eye like a figure in a zoetrope: man, woman, both, neither. “What --? My dear chap, I can’t understand you. If I had known any such thing, of course I would have told you. She had me  quite taken in.”

 

“Watson, I would not insist on that if I were you. If you could have observed yourself when talking of her ---!  I have never seen a clearer case of infatuation.  It is doubtless very natural, she is the pinnacle  of her sex. It has been a very long evening,   At least that wretched ball is done with. Good night, Watson.”

 

 

This seemed more of a dismissal than a farewell, as  once inside our rooms, he went to the book case rather than retiring, and began punctiliously updating Irene Adler’s entry in his index. I might have joked with him about the chances he would forget she was in fact alive, but I was too bewildered to do more than mutedly bid him goodnight and retreat to my bedroom.  

 

I tried to turn my mind back towards happy contemplation of the Nortons’ reunion, but as I undressed it continued to bear in on me that, for several days, my fellow-lodger  had supposed I was harbouring an ill-disguised passion for another man.

 

And he had behaved so oddly to me. He must have been terribly uncomfortable, I thought unhappily. Yet somehow his attitude over the past felt less explicable rather than more so. I became aware of a blush scorching my skin and tension scraping across my shoulders, and then decided the discomfort was unmerited. Surely I had not, in fact, _done_ anything either wrong or foolish. I resolved not to think any further about it and went to bed. 

 

But as soon as I slid between the sheets and closed my eyes I saw them, Irene and Álvaro, both beautiful and out of reach, two pairs of identical green eyes glittering at me.  I saw them out of their clothes,  Irene’s lithe waist, the small breasts she  must have hidden with bindings; the smooth planes of muscle  that Álvaro would have had. I saw Holmes in that moment against the door at the Hôtel des Étrangers, his head flung back, his long fingers fluttering.  I turned over in the bed and waited for it to pass, as I had before, and then when it did not, while I still had some control over myself, tried to summon some safer fantasy.

 


	9. Chapter 9

Irene Adler’s further adventures had been added to the index, the volume was shut and on the shelf, and Holmes was single-mindedly absorbed in the renewed study of coal-tar derivatives. Our living room was pungent with the sort of disconcerting smell of which I have become irrationally fond yet I had to hurry off to assist a colleague in Hampstead, rather than linger to breathe the vapours. I expected that he would be still hard at work by the time I came home. Instead I returned to find him sitting among carelessly scattered test tubes and tongs and pipettes, looking so dispirited I could only think his experiments had met with some spectacular reversal.

 

“I believe I’ve discovered a mild analgesic,” he said dully.

 

I could not help but suck my teeth anxiously at this. It could only mean he’d tried it himself, and even aside from the obvious dangers of dabbling with an untried substance,  it followed he’d probably hurt himself in order to test it effectively.  

 

“I’m all right, Watson, I was very cautious, and I believe any side effects would have manifested by now,” said Holmes, apparently reading my thoughts without so much as glancing at me. He frowned thoughtfully.  “Although it would probably cause serious liver damage in large enough quantities,” he added, sounding just faintly more interested.

 

Far from reassured, I reached out to tilt his head back,  and laid a hand on his brow to feel his temperature. He allowed it, but  started very slightly under my hands, and I felt a small, confused shock go ringing through me in response.  His hair was dishevelled over his forehead and as I satisfied myself that he was neither chilled nor feverish, I found myself smoothing it back without thinking about it, then too-hastily pulling back my hand. I checked his pulse with greater care than the task really demanded, gazing studiously at the long lines of his wrist and hand rather than at his face. I found his heart rate a little faster than it might have been, but strong and even enough.

 

 “Well, you  know I have some reservations about the method,” I said deciding that his colour was no worse than sleeplessness and overwork would account for. “But provided you’re right, on behalf of my profession, I congratulate you. We have so few safe recourses for pain. An excellent day’s work.”  

 

Holmes freed his wrist from me, and shook his head slowly as if even that were a miserable effort.  “It relieves mild pain,” he said, “of the kind that would pass off on its own. Is there any more frivolous thing in existence?”

 

This should not be happening, I thought. The black moods were supposed to abide by certain rules. The case ought to have chased the shadows away for longer than this.

 

“Holmes, if something were really wrong, would you tell me?”

 

He smiled crookedly at me, though the smile slipped off his face almost at once. “It is only the same thing as is always wrong,” he said. “It will pass. You know it always does.” Plain as print, I read the thought he did not speak: that it would always come back.

 

*

For two days I barely saw him. He was at a laboratory in Islington, at the British Library, at the Diogenes club --  anywhere I was not. And the longer I did not see him the more anxiety brewed in me that something was happening and I was uselessly standing by, allowing it.

 

 In the end, after receiving a letter on Álvaro de León’s familiar writing paper in Irene Adler’s elegant slanted handwriting, I encountered my friend only by staying up considerably later than was usual for me and waylaying him at the door as he came in.

 

“The Nortons have asked us to call on them,” I said,  after an exchange of ordinary pleasantries.

 

“You may give them my regards, if you wish to go,” Holmes replied carelessly.

 

“You _don’t_ wish to go?” I asked.

 

Holmes’ face said: I spend years of my life trying to teach this man deduction, and see the results.

 

 “But why not? Surely, after such an extraordinary business –”

 

“Such as it was, the case is over. I have learned from it all that is useful. They are very slight acquaintances, and I have had quite enough of society for this month.”

 

The photograph was missing from the mantelpiece. It had been so for days.

 

“Why are you so angry with Irene Adler?” I asked.

 

Holmes made an unnecessary business of hanging up his hat and coat.  “I am not angry with her.”

 

“That does not square with the data, Holmes.”

 

“She is a subject I am slightly tired of, is that not sufficient?”

 

“Not when it seems so entirely out of character, no. For years, she was a kind of heroine to you.  _The_ woman. You say she played you for a fool this time – even if it were so, she played as neat a trick the last time our paths crossed and you had nothing but praise for her. You were wretched to read of her death. Would one not expect a man with such a history to be delighted a lady he admired so steadfastly is alive after all?”

 

“I am glad she is alive.  I’m not a monster.”

 

“I didn’t mean to say you wished her any harm, you know that – but Holmes, for heaven’s sake -- what is the matter?”

 

“You will have it then?” said Holmes, a hunted look surfacing for an instant in his eyes. But then he sat down by the unlit fire, his face a dispassionate blank. He said crisply:  “I find the spectacle they made in the street... excessive.”

 

I remembered them kissing, the shock from some of the constables before they realised one of the pair was a woman. Unease twisted within me and my brain nudged me again with the thought _he had supposed me besotted with another man_ ,  as if I were in danger of forgetting it.

 

“She is extraordinarily fortunate in her homecoming,” Holmes said.  “Mr Norton is a rare husband. He had already made a most unconventional choice of bride, and if he has any family living they must have been scandalised. Respectable barristers marry finishing-school misses, not opera singers the wrong side of thirty with a habit of donning male dress.  And what follows? She... leads him into all sorts of danger,  makes  him believe she had died rather horribly, then erupts into his life again, and he does not even hesitate. He cannot have his arms about her fast enough.”

 

“Do you really blame her for that,” I asked hotly, struck by the hypocrisy of it. “You, of all people, fail to understand –”

 

“No,” said Holmes softly. “Just as she said to me: I do know something about pretending to be dead. I know why a person goes to such lengths. She loved him. If she had stayed at his side he would most likely have been killed. She would rather have had him alive to hate her than loving her and dead. She made the only logical decision. Of course I understand. If . . .” I think he came very close to leaving the thought unspoken. But then he lowered his head and said, the words no more than a breath:  “If I had ever loved, I might have acted so.”

 

There was a moment’s stillness. I said, “You _did_ act so.”

 

Holmes lifted his face and looked at me, just once. I could see the effort it cost him, but he did it. A sad, almost sheepish smile tugged at one corner of his mouth.

 

Even as the shock held me motionless, some distant part of my mind could admire the delicacy of it.  I understood him perfectly, and yet he had allowed me, if I chose, to pretend I had not. He had given me the truth, because I had insisted and because Irene Adler’s resurrection had wrought havoc on his ability to bear hiding it.  But  he also offered a chance for us to carry on as we were, for nothing to change. 

 

And I took it. After an instant in which there was nothing in the world but his rain-coloured eyes, I dropped my gaze and when I looked back Holmes had retreated behind his cool, professional mask.     

 

“If you would tell the Nortons I am indisposed, I would be obliged,” he said.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE END. AND THEY ALL LIVED MISERABLY EVER AFTER. Oh, wait, somehow there are two more chapters...


	10. Chapter 10

 

And so we went on as we had been.

 

Holmes no longer avoided me, except for one long evening shut up his room where I was almost certain he was dosing himself with something that would not be classifiable as a mild analgesic. I stood for some minutes outside the door, willing myself to knock, wondering if he knew I was there.

 

But I could not do it. I could think what I would say, or do, if he opened the door.

 

Otherwise, cooped up in Baker Street by dark days of relentless rain, we sat together trying  to render the silence less oppressive: I with the latest treatise on surgery, he absorbed in deciphering a fifteenth-century palimpsest. Stanley Hopkins came around with a murder and a pair of golden pince-nez, and if I  was morose and there was a bitter note in Holmes’ voice from time to time, the young detective did not seem to notice it.

           

It would ease with time, perhaps, I thought. We had been friends for so long, we always found our level again, even after the drugs, the quarrels, my marriage, his death. I would cease to feel we were both enacting parodies of ourselves. It would no longer matter that I was guilty of the two faults I had always loathed most: treachery and cowardice. My thoughts would cease to nag me with the same points, over and over: Holmes had not been disgusted by my fascination with Álvaro de León, he had been _jealous._ And later he had been tentatively hopeful. And he had endured three years of exile to keep me safe, knowing I might never forgive him for the sacrifice, because he loved me. All of that would somehow become unimportant.

 

And he . . . he would forget what he felt, what he had said to me, what I had done?

 

And when I was alone, the spectres of Álvaro de León, Irene Adler,  and Sherlock Holmes would cease to shine behind my eyelids like electric filaments. Álvaro, vanishing into the fog; Irene, smiling sadly as she played with her knife; and Holmes; flying so fast after the hound he seemed scarcely earthbound in the moonlight,  Holmes’ eyes closed in private, painful rapture behind the violin, Holmes gliding through the mass of dancers at the masked ball, with all the grace of a black-feathered bird of prey. 

 

It lasted three days.

 

*

 

The case of the Golden Pince-Nez was wrapped up in a day, but it was a day that began at five in the morning after barely four hours sleep. I retired almost at once when we returned from the Russian Embassy, thinking wearily that it was strange to be mixed up so  soon in another case of a husband and wife separated by miles and years. But how different the two reunions had been...

 

I had barely shut myself in my bedroom when I heard Holmes’ tread on the stairs and, the next moment, his knock on the door.

 

I  opened the door and stood aside to let him into the room but he stayed resolutely on the other side of the threshold. All his considerable resources of will were too-plainly bent upon maintaining his composure, and it was shocking to see them visibly failing, shocking to know myself the cause of it.  He was very pale, his shoulders taut and high, his hands clenched in fists at his sides.

 

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Watson,” he said stiffly.  “And I have several further apologies to make before I have finished, including one for what I must say to you now. But it cannot be deferred. I believe I shocked you very badly a few nights ago. Thank you for your considerable forbearance.”

 

I opened my mouth to protest this, already  stricken that he should feel by my pusillanimous silence I had actually done him an undeserved good turn.  Holmes held up a hand. “Please – it is imperative I say this while it is within my power. You must believe that when I  suggested you return here, I had no hopes of – no intentions of anything, but that we live as we did before. I had missed –“ he swallowed. “My _friend._  

 

“And we could have continued so, I think,  except that recent events led me briefly to believe something that was not true, and now I . . .  I cannot sustain it. I am  very sorry. I thought I could  accustom myself to things once more, but I find it is more than I can . . .  I am not equal to this. The fault is entirely mine. I persuaded you to move here; it is only fair that I be the one to leave –“

 

“Holmes!” I interrupted, aghast, but Holmes continued speaking:

 

“ I will cover my share of the rent as long as you like, you know that I can easily afford it now, there is no need to trouble yourself about it; if you wish to find another lodger –“

 

We were both speaking over each other by now: “This is your _home,_ you cannot speak of –“

 

“ – I will do whatever I can to assist you –”

 

“Oh, Holmes, I never meant to drive you to this –”

“I will go to  my brother’s for tonight –“

 

“You mean to leave _tonight_? _”_ I said, stupefied, and without allowing myself time to hesitate further, grasped him by his shoulders and kissed him.

 

I believe I was more terrified, as I closed the last inch between us, than I ever was with bullets flying about me in Afghanistan.  I cannot say I truly ceased to be terrified. But doubt, at least, vanished in a flash like naphtha in a flame. Even if it all fell to pieces the next moment, there was peace there, in the heart of the fear, at the place our lips met.

 

It was very brief, and Holmes did not precisely kiss me back, though his eyes closed and for an involuntary instant he leant his face against mine.

 

Then he started back, and so did I.

 

  “What are you doing?” he asked, in such a curt tone of voice that one would almost have thought the disclosure of sentiment had been entirely on my side and all unwelcome.

 

“What I should have done before,” I said, breathlessly. “But you surprised me, and I was afraid, I – I still am, you can see that, but not as afraid as I am of not having you near me.”

 

His expression softened but only for an instant. “Watson,” he said, “I let myself entertain a misapprehension about you,  but that was folly, and this is madness.  You’ve admired women your whole life.”  

 

“Yes, but I – “ I felt a wave of heat flood my face, redoubled by my own consciousness of it. It was damnably hard to speak of memories and thoughts that for years I had hardly dared to name  even to myself. “There were boys, at school.”

 

My poor friend looked so tired. “You are talking of schoolboy fumblings, twenty-five years and more ago.”

 

“Yes, they were, by definition, schoolboy fumblings. And nothing that happened in the army amounted to much more than that, I suppose.  But it was more than once. Soldiers have ways of explaining these things away: we were friends, we were lonely and afraid, there were no women. I –“ I rubbed a hand over my face. “I am sorry, I have never spoken of any of this to anyone before. Then, afterwards, while I was still young,  I used to think I had put all that aside, grown out of it, I suppose, but sometimes . . . “I was shaking, I discovered.  “I never did anything, but I could not always disguise the truth to myself so well. Especially – especially not where you were concerned. But I would ignore it, or sometimes I would torture myself over it.  

 

“But then – I married Mary, and I loved her so, Holmes, you know I did – and then she died and you were gone, and nothing has ever been worse. Nothing could be worse. And ever since – the wretchedness people cause themselves, and each other, over the most harmless things – I haven’t had any more appetite for it.  Yet I’ve still hurt you out of sheer weakness, and I’m so sorry –“ he shook his head and seemed about to speak again but I plunged on.  “Please – you have to believe you were right.

 

“You were right about me and Álvaro de León -- right at first, that is, and wrong later. I _was_ infatuated with him, but not because he was a woman in disguise:  because he was a beautiful riddle, and so is Irene Adler. But so are you, and it’s you I have been trying to puzzle out all these years; it’s you I’d follow anywhere you’ll let me. Please, don’t go, I couldn’t bear it a second time.”

 

He looked away from me – at the wall, the floor. His breathing was coming hard and rapid and I could see him struggling to decide whether believing me or not believing me would be, in the end, more harrowing.

 

I took hold of him again, “Look at me,” I said.   “You can read my very thoughts in my features, Holmes, you’ve told me so yourself.  I love you. If that is not is not true, if I am somehow mistaken, you would know it even if I did not.” 

 

He did as I said and looked at me. His  brows were drawn together and if I had not known him so well and so long it would have been impossible for me to stand under that gaze, raising my chin to meet it, trying to let every scrap of what I felt show on my face. He still looked – it was a trick of his aquiline features -- impersonal, stern,  ruthless.  But I could see his pulse throbbing in the base of his throat.

 

Then he surged through the doorway and kissed me so fiercely I had to cling to him to keep my balance.

 

I  had never before been embraced by someone taller and stronger than myself, never been held in arms from which I could not easily have broken free. Trusting him as I did, I let myself sink luxuriously into the  headiness of it while he stripped away my collar and tie, but when he drew back a little to fling off his waistcoat, I lunged at him, trying  to overpower him in return. It was unexpectedly easy: the steely strength  melted into surrender the instant I pushed against it, and in a moment I had him pressed against the wall, eyelids fluttering closed, seemingly helpless. It made my chest ache with tenderness for him, even though I had just shoved him roughly enough to topple a couple of books from a shelf beside him. I dragged his shirt from his shoulder and we both broke off  for an instant to stare at each other in shared amazement, then I kissed his throat, thrilled by the moan he gave as I did so.   He struggled free for a moment, but only to shake the garment off entirely and then clutch me to him again, the fingers of one hand raking through my hair while the other  slid up to find the warm skin under my shirt.  

 

I hesitated at last, when we were both naked. I looking down at his long, lean-muscled body  as  I knelt astride him, holding him to the bed while he writhed up against my grasp  to reach my lips.    “You will have to help me, I’m not, ah, exactly certain how best to --” I confessed.

 

He laughed up at me, a flicker of anxiety fading from his eyes.  “What happened to that wealth of experience with men you were just telling me of?”

 

“I claimed no such thing. Merely that there was precedent,” I said, deciding that I might as well improvise while I was waiting for instructions.

 

“Well -- you seem to be managing well enough –-” he gasped as I caressed him: “ _Christ.”_  

 

Nevertheless he pulled me down and snaked one hand between us to join mine and the other around my back, and there were no more words for a while.

 

*

 

I awoke  to find the lamps in the room still burning and Holmes, propped on one elbow beside me, watching me meditatively. His lips were still reddened and glossy, his long eyelashes casting a spray of shadows in the lamplight.  I had left the faint impression of my teeth on his shoulder and chest, and a number of small, glowing aches and smarts scattered across my own body that told me I would not come away from this bed unmarked either.   I felt inordinately proud of these mutual accomplishments.

 

“Ah, good,” Holmes said, in a leisurely drawl.  “I have been waiting to put a number of important questions to you.”

 

A little ashamed of how heavily I had fallen asleep almost the moment we were done, I gave a grunt of mild protest. Holmes dipped his head closer to mine.“First,” he said softly, “are you all right?”

I shifted so as to throw one leg over his. “Yes,” I mumbled against his neck, though “all right” seemed an entirely inadequate assessment of how I was.  Holmes cupped his hand over my hair.   

 

“Well then, this has been a mortifying week for my pride. Wrong on one thing after another. Blind to what is under my nose not only where certain  women running about in britches are concerned, but hopelessly ignorant of compelling facts regarding my own biographer. Watson, how did I not see this?” His hand remained on my head, stroking idly. It felt almost unthinkable that it had never rested there before. He whispered, “How much time did we waste?”

 

I sighed, because the truth was complicated and I was afraid it would hurt him. “None of it,” I said. “Or all of it, perhaps. But for this to have happened before . . . a great many things would have had to have been different.”

 

“Tell me, then.”

 

I looked up at him. “You used to terrify me,” I admitted. “I adored you,  of course – you know that, I hope? And you were always beautiful, and sometimes I would have liked to –” I showed what I would have liked to do, drawing him down for a kiss.  “But I don’t believe I could have touched you, even if I had understood myself better, even if I could have believed you would have wished me to. I was so unsure of myself for so long after the war, and you seemed so . . .”

 

“Cold and aloof and heartless,” Holmes supplied sadly.  

 

“Awe-inspiring, and untouchable,” I corrected him softly.  “Like a saint in a shrine. One that works miracles far more busily than most. I could . . . worship from as close as I dared to get, but . . .” I swept my hand over his chest. “But not this close.”

 

“ _Saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,_ ” said Holmes, and lifted mine to examine it, entwined with his.  “This is a simile that has led  us to very strange places. I didn’t mean for you to be so unnerved.”

 

“I am sorry, I wish I had something better to tell you. It sounds utterly craven.”

 

“No.  I have been frightening people since I was three years old.”

 

“I know. You can’t help it.”

 

“That is much too easy. I cannot – I cannot make myself a particularly reassuring presence, it is true. But intimidating people is a useful skill; and I make quite deliberate use of it. I wish I could say I never made use of it with you, but you know I have, when I thought that was the fastest way to something I wanted.”

  

 “Nevertheless, it was not your fault I was so timorous. That was the Afghan war’s fault, and without that I should never have met you. I couldn’t even bring myself to ask what you did for a living, do you remember?”

 

Holmes nodded slowly. “What made the difference?”

 

“Time,” I said, and that was true, but it was also prevaricating, and I could not give him any less than the full truth, nor live with any more parts of my life shut away. “And Mary.”

 

I remember the dread, in the first months of my grief,   of losing an exact image of my wife’s dark blue eyes.  The panic that I would forget her warm, steady gaze at me, in which I saw reflected someone as calm and resolute as she was herself.  That particular pain faded, even if the grief itself stood as firm as a granite column, as I found I could still feel the power of that expression, even if I could no longer see it so clearly.

 

Holmes was silent for perhaps a minute, contemplating. “Then, although I have always considered her a gifted and charming woman, I have never till now admired her as she deserved.”

 

“Thank you,” I said, fervently. I knew it could not have come easily to him and could only wrap myself round him in gratitude.

 

I drifted back into a doze for a little while. “Can I ask you something too?” I murmured some time later.

 

“Of course.”

 

“At the Hôtel des Étrangers, the other day. You were chasing about the room, enacting what Havelberg had been doing, and when you found the trace of rouge on the doorframe, there was a moment when you, well . . .

 

Holmes’ eyes slid away from me sidelong while he utterly failed to repress a smile in which embarrassment and self-satisfaction were provokingly mingled.

 

“You _did_ do it on purpose!” I cried, starting up in delighted outrage.

 

“Only to a point. I made a little more of it than I might have. I was halfway about it before I thought of anything but the case, I promise you, but then, perhaps it did strike me as an opportunity to garner data in another field...”

 

“Did it, indeed?”

 

“You see, the question of whether Mr de Leon was the only man capable  of capturing your attention was of peculiar interest to me.”

 

“And your conclusions?”

 

“Modestly encouraging at the time, though you were admirably discreet,  but I was afraid my observations were compromised by wishful thinking. And later sure of it, of course.” He looked briefly sad again.  “You see, it is as I have always said; these attachments are so dangerous to the judgement.”

 

“Resign yourself to it,” I advised him. “It is only going to get worse. Your judgement is going to be most terribly compromised in the next half hour if I have anything to say about it.”

 

“Oh, dear.”

 

“I have one more question.”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“Now will you call on Irene Adler?”

 

Holmes turned his face against my wounded shoulder and laughed. “Watson, did you take me to bed to induce me to mend my manners? I know you like to see yourself  as a civilising influence, but is not prostitution taking the thing too far?”

 

I swatted at him, which led to a brief skirmish, and shortly afterwards he was  gasping, “Yes, yes, whatever you like, with all my heart,” though possibly by then he  was no longer especially mindful of what he was agreeing to.


	11. Chapter 11

 

In the end, we asked the Nortons to call on us at Baker Street.

 

It must have taken some courage for Mrs Norton (I will try to accustom myself to her married name) to ride into town dressed as she was, but courage was not a quality that remarkable lady lacked. She wore a lace-collared blouse, with a cameo brooch at her throat, and  small gold earrings glinting among the short auburn curls. But she was still wearing Álvaro de León’s trousers of olive serge,  and his waistcoat quickly altered to fit  rather than conceal her figure.

 

Holmes observed the earrings with a pained expression as we rose to greet her. “You really _might_ have noticed pierced ears, Watson.”

 

“No, he might not,” returned Mrs Norton. “Do you suppose I would forget to conceal such a clue?  I covered the holes with putty. Oh, look, Godfrey, there’s the old photograph!” For it was restored to pride of place on the mantelpiece. Mrs Norton picked it up and examined it rather sadly. “Look how young and pretty I was,” she said.

 

“Don’t fish, Irene,” said Godfrey Norton, although the smile  that lit his face whenever he so much as glanced at her must have been compliment enough.   

 

If she had been after  a tribute to her looks,  I could easily have obliged her. But  the subtle strangeness of a face that seemed to flicker between ages -- never quite that of a youth nor of a mature man -- was gone with her other identity;  now it was simply the face of a beautiful woman in her late thirties.

 

Godfrey Norton, on the other hand, looked ten years younger than the desolate gentleman we had first glimpsed in Deptford.  “We want to thank you both,” he said. “You saved my life, Doctor, and I was entirely graceless about it. And Mr Holmes – I may have a few criticisms of Irene’s methods, but she would not have had her success without you.  And we want to apologise again for all the trouble we’ve both put you to.”

 

“There are a few things I should like cleared up,” I said. “It’s strange to me that Havelberg attacked you after knowing where you were for so long and doing nothing.”

 

Godfrey Norton shot a wry glance at his wife. “I’m afraid Irene put herself and both of you to considerable difficulty tracking him down,” he said. “If she’d been prepared to let me into her plans,  I could have told her I’ve known where he was for months.”

 

I laughed, while Holmes nodded to himself as if to say  he’d deduced as much already.

 

“And if I had, you’d never have let me near him alone,” said Irene Norton.

 

“I would never have let you near him _at all._  I would have done anything rather than have him so much as look at you again. So. I am forced to understand.” Godfrey Norton looked down at his hands, and his expression darkened for the first time. “I  never thought of anything as dramatic as disguising myself and coaxing him to confess,  and I’m sure I would have made a remarkably bad job of it had I tried it.  but I was damned if I meant to let him walk free forever. I always – I told you, Dr Watson – I was always half-convinced it wasn’t Irene’s body in Florence, I _knew_ her – I knew if letting the world think her dead would lead him away from me, she’d have done it. But never being certain – and wondering all the time if I was mad not to be  --”

 

He closed his eyes, and Irene Norton gripped his hand, parted her lips to say something, and then subsided with a defeated look. There was no further apology she could make. That is the penalty of being forgiven already.

 

“For years I’ve been corresponding with witnesses on the continent,” he went on. “And  Bohemian lawyers, French inspectors, agents of the German crown, anyone I could find who knew anything -- asking for copies of their files, trying to build a case  against him. I did my best to keep track of him. Three months ago I heard a man of his description had arrived at the Hôtel des Étrangers. I went there to make sure it was him, and – I was not as discreet as I should have been;  he saw me, and I – I could not simply _stand_ there. I  struck him.  He wasn’t alone and I didn’t exactly come off the better, but the street was full of people and he must have thought killing me in front of witnesses would be more trouble than it was worth. I guessed he’d move after that, so I paid a cabbie to wait near the hotel and be  sure he was ready for him – and only for him.”

 

Holmes smiled. “I’d have advised him not to take the first cab...”

 

“Well, thank heavens he had not you to advise him, then, for it was two days before he moved and bribes of that scale are no simple matter for a poor Deptford Latin tutor. I scarcely ate for a week. He’d taken a set of rooms in Lyndhurst Gardens. I paid a few boys there to keep an eye on him and let me know he was still there, but I went there from time to time to see for myself. I had been unnerved enough by men following me that I went there the day before the ball.”

 

“You were supposed to be invigilating at the College of Preceptors,” I said.

 

Godfrey Norton grinned again. He had a charming, lopsided smile, that seemed brighter every time it appeared as if recovering from lack of use. “Irene overheard me saying very loudly and clearly to the postmistress that that was what I was doing, precisely because I thought someone might be trying to overhear. I did walk in through the building’s main entrance that morning, and out again that afternoon, but I also made use of a back door and hurried off to Lyndhurst Gardens. But  for all I thought I’d been clever,  I suppose he had his agents watching for me. Someone must have seen me there, and Havelberg must have decided he’d had enough of me. After you saved my life, Doctor, and I’d left you in the cab, I went rushing back to Deptford at first. But I didn’t find Irene, and all I could think was that whatever she was doing, she’d be where Havelberg was before long. So I went back to Lyndhurst Gardens, and this time no one saw me.  I followed him to St James’ Square, tried rather clumsily to get into the ball and got thrown out. I didn’t see any of you leaving the Willis Rooms – the constables very nearly took me off to the station, I’m afraid I was pretty agitated. I’d barely convinced them not to when –“ he looked at his wife again, and the anger and fatigue that had shadowed his expression faded away into joy once more. “There you were,” he said softly.

 

“All this evidence you’ve amassed . . .?” Holmes inquired.

 

“Is now with Scotland Yard, yes. I am not sure it would have been strong enough on its own, but with your testimony of the confession . . .”

 

“He’ll likely hang,” agreed Holmes. “I only hope there is no move to extradite him to either Germany or Bohemia; that he might escape on the journey must be his one hope. But a very forlorn one, Mr and Mrs Norton, very forlorn indeed.”

 

“What will you do now?” I asked. “Will you go back to the continent?”

 

“I’ve travelled enough,” said Mrs Norton. “We think we might stay in London – perhaps Greenwich, when we can. If you’ll promise not to come around in disguise looking for photographs in secret compartments, Mr Holmes.”

  
Holmes smiled at them, unexpectedly  guileless and warm – “I am content with the photograph I already have,” he said.  “And I am delighted to hear of your plans. London will certainly be the less stagnant for your presence. My congratulations to you both.”

 

“Then perhaps you will come in your own person sometimes, and hear Irene sing?” asked Mr Norton.

 

“Perhaps,” said Holmes, which was what I had expected him to say, yet to my pleased astonishment there was more of a suspended _yes_ in his voice than a lightly veiled _no_.

 

Mr and Mrs Norton  sat side by side on our settee hand in hand, both shimmering with happiness like a castle in a heat haze. I felt an answering smile spread across my own face – and felt, in the same instant, that it would be dangerous to look at my friend. And yet I could not help it, any more than Godfrey Norton could keep his gaze from going back and back to his wife.   Holmes’ eyes met mine and though he had managed to rearrange his mouth into a firm, neutral line, the smile from a moment before seemed to have left an impression in the air, a  brightness like the trail of sparks from a firework, except that  instead of dying away it only intensified the longer he looked at me. And if I did not glance away when wisdom said I should have done, neither did he. It was all I could do to catch myself from mirroring our friends, and reaching for his hand.

 

And then I looked back at Irene Norton, and saw her  quick green eyes dart to and fro across us both, so sharp I should have been anxious something might be cut. And yet, I discovered, I was not.

 

“I would like to ask you both one more favour,” she said, “though heaven knows I have asked enough already.”

 

“What is it, Mrs Norton?” asked Holmes.

 

“A photograph,” she said, “in exchange for mine, to commemorate the occasion. One of both of you together.”

 

*

  The plate which now stands on Irene Norton’s writing desk  was the product of a somewhat tempestuous session, in which the hapless photographer kept trying to have Holmes pose with a magnifying glass and I with a pen, to Holmes’ considerable disgust. In the end, I proposed a change of scene, and we decamped with camera and tripod from the sitting room into the small yard behind the house, to have our picture taken against stark London brick, in the shade of the plane tree.

 

Holmes affects to mildly dislike the thing. Yet with Mrs Norton’s portrait on his mantelpiece and sovereign on his watch-chain attest, he cannot claim to be altogether immune to the value of a keepsake. Besides, he must have gone back to St James’ Park alone, and retrieved the golden sun-mask I wore to Mrs Flyte’s ball – for I found it, a little the worse for London rain, hanging on the back of his bedroom door beaming across the room at the gallery of criminals on his walls.

 

Mrs Norton’s photograph shows us from the side, the better to capture the far-sighted intensity of Holmes’ gaze, as the photographer put it, though he had also realised that open exasperation would be the only expression he would get  from his subject as long as the famous detective continued to look in his direction. I am in the foreground, which is not the placing I would have chosen, but otherwise Holmes’ greater height would have obscured me altogether. I am at Holmes’ side, though he is a little ahead of me, of course, closer to whatever  it is, in the shared distance, that we are looking at. Our profiles overlap, my edges contained within the black of his coat, so that although we are not, nor appear to be touching,  we share an outline, and there is no visible space between us.

 

I am fond of it, even if Holmes is not, yet I have not asked for a copy. If I need any  souvenir beyond the man’s presence in every part of my life,  paper and ink have always been good enough for me.


End file.
